Patent ID: 7076544

Claim:
At a proxy server communicably linked to a first network and communicably linked to a second network, the first network including at least one client computer and the second network including at least one server computer, a method of caching streaming media content from a server computer at the proxy server to facilitate more efficient client computer access to the streaming media content, the method comprising: receiving a request for streaming media content from a client computers included in the first network, the request directed to a server computer in the second network, the request corresponding to a resource identifier that identifies streaming media content maintained by the server computer; determining that the number of requests for the identified streaming media content satisfies a threshold indicative of the streaming media content being a candidate for caching at the proxy server, the determination based on analysis of the received request and on analysis of one or more previously received requests for the identified streaming media content from client computers in the first network, the one or more previously received requests being received at the proxy server prior to the received request being received at the proxy server; in response to the threshold being satisfied, calculating a request rate for the resource identifier based on the number of ticks of an adaptive global clock that occurred between reception of the first previously received request and reception of the received request, the ticks of the adaptive global clock accruing at different rates according to the level of network activity at the network proxy; determining that the calculated request rate is greater than the request rate for at least one resource identifier corresponding to streaming media content previously cached at the proxy server; and caching the requested streaming media content at the proxy server.