Patent ID: 7644173

Claim:
A method for facilitating expedited delivery and continuous presentation of media content to a node over a network, the method comprising: a computing device communicating requests to a plurality of peer nodes within the network for the media content; buffering the data received from the peer nodes after communicating the requests to the peer nodes; communicating a request to a media server to present media content at the same time as when the requests are communicated to the peer nodes; buffering the data received via a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) from the media server after communicating the request to the media server; presenting a separate media clip while the data received from the media server is being buffered; presenting the media content based on the UDP data received from the media server after presenting the separate media clip, while the data received from the peer nodes is being buffered, wherein the UDP data playback time is configurable depending on system requirements and network conditions; and discontinuing receipt of data from the media server and presenting the media content based on data received from at least one peer node without significant interruption in presentation; wherein discontinuing receipt of data from the media server involves terminating data transfer from the media server after the aggregate data rate of the data received from the peer nodes reaches a pre-determined level.