Patent ID: 8270403

Claim:
A content delivery network (CDN) for delivering content of others with the Internet using a plurality of point of presences (POPs), the CDN comprising: a first POP accessible using an Internet protocol (IP) address, wherein the first POP comprises a plurality of first edge servers that each are configured to deliver content to end user devices; a second POP accessible using the IP address, wherein: the plurality of POPs comprise the first POP and the second POP, the second POP is geographically separated from the first POP, the second POP comprises a plurality of second edge servers that each are configured to deliver content to end user devices; and a switch fabric that assigns a request for content received at the first POP to one of the plurality of second edge servers when the second POP is determined likely to provide improved delivery of the content object of the request, wherein the request assignment is performed after a domain name service (DNS) lookup for the content object; an internal data agent that identifies an IP address of a requestor; and a messaging queue, which gathers delivery statistics from a party not under the control or within the domain of the CDN characterizing a delivery between the first POP and the IP address to produce a stream of delivery statistics, wherein the stream of delivery statistics affects how the switch fabric assigns requests among the plurality of POPs.