Patent ID: 8566470

Claim:
A method comprising: routing a request for a segment of a media object to a target end node assigned to a key space zone corresponding to the segment, wherein the target end node is one of a plurality of end nodes in a peer-to-peer network; determining, by the target end node, whether the segment is stored at any one of the plurality of end nodes; if the segment is stored at one of the plurality of end nodes, streaming the segment from the one of the plurality of end nodes; determining whether a segment index exists at the target end node; if the segment index does not exist at the target end node, determining that the segment is not stored at any one of the plurality of end nodes; in response to determining that the segment is not stored at any of the plurality of end nodes, retrieving the media object from a remote media server based on a uniform resource locator of the media object via a core node and streaming the segment from the core node; wherein the remote media server is not in the peer-to-peer network and the core node is a dedicated proxy in the peer-to-peer network between the plurality of end nodes and the remote media server; wherein when the segment index does not exist at the target end node, designating the core node as a streaming server for streaming each subsequent requested segment of the media object in response to retrieving the media object from the core node.