Patent ID: 6941370

Claim:
A method for dynamically reconfiguring a proxy server network to deliver content by dynamically selling extra capacity, comprising the steps of: determining unused capacity on the proxy server network for a period of time; selling the said unused capacity for a specified period of time to web sites or other service providers which need additional capacity; using said unused capacity to serve requests to the said web sites or other service providers purchasing the extra capacity for said period of time; and providing a controller to monitor and control traffic from the web sites or other service providers to be within a limit of the capacity purchased; wherein said controller uses a domain name server based approach wherein the domain name server performs name to address mapping for assigning the request to proxy servers of the proxy server network; wherein the said domain name server based approach makes the domain name server of the proxy server network a primary domain name server, which is the only domain name server that can assign names to the proxy servers; and wherein said domain name server based approach further comprises the steps of: the domain name server of the purchaser World Wide Web site routing the name to address map of said purchaser World Wide Web site to said domain name server of the proxy network; and said primary domain name server mapping a fraction of the received mapping requests to servers in the proxy network based on an amount of unused capacity purchased.