Patent ID: 8494004

Claim:
A server-less content distribution system for optimizing resource allocation, the system comprising: a peer to peer network comprising a plurality of processor nodes with varying resources for downloading and presenting media content, wherein each processor node comprises processing logic for: inferring global properties of a neighborhood comprising peer nodes i from a summarization of information obtained locally at each peer node i, wherein the neighborhood is a set of all nodes with which the peer node i can potentially exchange data, and a neighbor node is a node j in the neighborhood other than the peer node i, the inferring step performed by each peer node i comprising: computing its resource allocation dependencies based on local information; propagating the resource allocation dependency information to its neighboring nodes j; calculating resource target rates for each neighbor node j; and allocating resources to its neighbor nodes j in accordance with the propagated dependency information; wherein each processor node further comprises the processor logic for steps performed by each peer node i as part of the computing step: monitoring a current resource allocation rate of all the neighboring nodes; computing a residual resource allocation of the neighboring nodes; and using the residual resource allocation in subsequent pulling decisions based on a working set.