Patent ID: 6944632

Claim:
A method for gathering statistical information related to the dissemination of content to consumers in a commercial sales outlet, wherein the content is provided to the commercial sales outlet by a network management center, the method comprising: receiving the content at a multimedia server; distributing selected components of the content to a plurality of nodes on a private network, wherein each of the plurality of nodes is configured to communicate at least some of the selected components to the consumers; responsive to each of a plurality of interactive consumer requests with one of the plurality of nodes, communicating one or more selected components to each consumer; gathering statistical information related to the selected components, wherein the statistical information includes usage statistics associated with the one or more interactively selected components and location of each node associated with the one or more interactively selected components; performing diagnostic checks on the plurality of nodes and the multimedia server; gathering diagnostic information associated with the plurality of nodes and the multimedia server; and transmitting the statistical information and the diagnostic information to the network management center.