Patent ID: 8473629

Claim:
A transport network, comprising, in combination: one or more content provider entry point machines; a set of one or more of reflector machines; a set of edge node machines to which requesting end users are directed to obtain a live data stream that is published to the transport network; computer memory located in a given machine in the transport network and holding computer program instructions executed by a hardware processor, the computer program instructions comprising: program code to receive a burst portion of the live stream from a first machine in the transport network, the burst portion received at a rate that is higher than an encoded bitrate of the live stream, the burst portion representing an amount of the live stream stored at the first machine during a given time period; program code operative after the burst portion of the live stream is received from the first machine to receive a second portion of the live stream from the first machine, the second portion received at the encoded bitrate of the live stream; and program code to process the burst portion of the live stream to enable data packets associated with the burst portion to align with data packets associated with the second portion.