Patent ID: 7979538

Claim:
A method of redirecting web content downloads comprising: monitoring one or more downloads of web pages and related content from one or more web servers to one or more web browsers that request web pages from the web servers, wherein at least a portion of the web browsers cache the web pages provided by the web servers in a local web content cache, wherein the local web content cache is used by the corresponding web browser to improve speech on subsequent requests to the same Web pages; defining a swarm including one or more previous downloaders of the web pages and related content from the one or more web servers, wherein the one or more previous downloaders of the web pages and related content include one or more web content caches including at least a portion of the web pages and related content; flagging at least a portion of the web pages residing on the web server as non-swarm content, which is always provided directly from the web server to satisfy client side requests, wherein other portions of web page pages provided by the web server are flagged as being able to be provided from by redirecting a requesting client to one or more of the web content caches; tracking stored web pages within the one or more web content caches of the swarm; determining whether a bandwidth capabilities of the web server results in the web server being not capable of reasonably satisfying current requests without exhibiting degraded performance; when the bandwidth capabilities are not capable of reasonably satisfying the customer requests without exhibiting degraded performance, redirecting a new downloader that requested the web pages and related content from the one or more web servers to the one or more web content caches of the swarm; and when the bandwidth threshold has not been met or exceeded, the web server directly serving the web pages and related content to the one or more client-side browsers in response to the request.