Patent ID: 8413198

Claim:
A method, comprising: determining, at a server, whether content is available within a peer-to-peer network for a client in the peer-to-peer network to request; advertising the requested content as being available only when there is a plurality of clients currently on a peer-to-peer network that have the content available for download; receiving, at the server, a request from a client for that content, wherein the requesting client and the server are part of the peer-to-peer network; determining whether the requesting client has access rights to the content; if the requesting client has access rights to the content, then determining one or more other clients on the peer-to-peer network that have the content available for download; selecting, by the server, from the one or more other clients, a client closest to the requesting client; notifying the requesting client of availability of the content on the client closest to the requesting client that has the requested content; allowing the requesting client to download the content from the selected client; determining whether the download of the content from the selected client was able to be completed by the requesting client; if the download of the content was not able to be completed by the requesting client, then selecting a second client from the one or more other clients; and allowing the requesting client to continue downloading the content from the second client.