Patent ID: 8510417

Claim:
A content delivery network (CDN) for dynamically serving a content object over the Internet to an end user system, the CDN comprising: a content object request function that receives a request for streaming content object to the end user system; a plurality of points of presence (POPs), wherein: the plurality of POPs are geographically distributed; the plurality of POPs, one of the plurality of POPs being a POP, and each of the plurality of POPs comprises a plurality of servers including an edge server; an edge server selection function that assigns the request to the edge server in the POP, and each publishing point maps a request for content to a storage location for the content; an edge-server provisioning function that adds a first subset of the plurality of publishing points to the edge server; an automatic purging function that removes a second subset of the plurality of publishing points according to an automated algorithm; and a streaming function that streams the content object to the end user system, wherein the algorithm comprises: automatically determining a third subset of publishing points that are designated as sticky so as to disable the purging function for the third subset of publishing points; and avoiding removal of the third subset of the plurality of publishing points.