Patent ID: 8122098

Claim:
A system for managing content requests comprising: a data store operative to maintain request processing criteria corresponding to requested resources, the request processing criteria including at least one of financial cost information, quality of service information, volume of request information and content provider specified specific criteria; and a storage management component operative to: obtain a client computing device domain name system (DNS) query corresponding to one or more requested resources; identify a network storage service provider and one or more content delivery network (CDN) service providers for providing a requested resource to a client computing device, wherein the network storage service provider and one or more content delivery network service providers are independent of the storage management component; as a function of the request processing criteria, determine whether a subsequent request for the requested resource corresponding to the DNS query should be received by the identified network storage service provider or by the identified one or more CDN service providers, wherein the storage management component makes the determination by: associating a financial cost with each of the identified network storage service provider and the identified one or more CDN service providers, wherein the financial cost corresponds to a financial cost attributed to a content provider for providing the requested resource corresponding to the DNS query by the identified network storage service provider and by the identified one or more CDN service providers respectively; and selecting at least one alternative resource identifier associated with at least one of the identified network storage service provider and the identified one or more CDN service providers based on a financial cost for providing the requested resource below a cost threshold; and in response to the DNS query, cause the return of the at least one alternative resource identifier.