Patent ID: 8370452

Claim:
A method of implementing partial object caching, the method comprising: receiving, at a content delivery network (CDN) from an end user device, a current request for at least an arbitrarily-sized portion of an object; retrieving the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object from a content site and delivering the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object to the end user device; caching, in a partial object cache, the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object; receiving a subsequent request for the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object; retrieving, from the partial object cache the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object and delivering the arbitrarily-sized portion of the object in response to the subsequent request, and in a response to a new request for a second portion of the object that is not covered by the cached arbitrarily-sized portion of the object, modifying the new request, in flight, to stop at the byte just prior to the cached arbitrarily-sized portion.