Patent ID: 8417766

Claim:
A system for providing peer-to-peer network acceleration, the system comprising: a plurality of clients in communication together and in communication with at least one content server, wherein each of the plurality of clients is capable of functioning as a proxy server by receiving a peer-to-peer request for content that identifies an associated content server, and by communicating the peer-to-peer request for content to the associated content server; wherein at least one of the plurality of clients generates a request for content from a content server and the request is part of a chatty communication with a plurality of round trips to complete a response to the request; wherein the requesting client determines that at least one of the plurality of clients is in a position to retrieve the requested content on the content server at lower latency than the requesting client; wherein the one of the plurality of clients functions as a proxy server for the requesting client by receiving the request for content from the content server, requesting the content from the content server, and communicating the content as received from the content server to the at least one of the plurality of clients that generates the request for content; and wherein the requesting client is configured to receive, from the content server via the at least one of the plurality of clients functioning as a proxy server for the requesting client, the requested content.