Patent ID: 7274659

Claim:
A method for servicing a request from a client system for the transfer of a streaming media object which resides in a system that includes at least one stream engine node and at least one stream director node, comprising: receiving a request for a streaming media object at the stream director node; locating a stream engine node to which or from which the streaming media object is to be transferred; verifying that sufficient system resources are available to service request; preparing a data transfer path between the stream engine node and the client system that made the streaming media request, the stream director node not being included in the data transfer path and the data transfer path including one or more resources along the path; causing resources along the prepared path to be reserved for use by the data transfer; passing the request for the streaming media object from the stream director node to the located stream engine node for servicing; and transferring, over the prepared path, data comprising the streaming media object between the client system that made the request and the located stream engine node.