Patent ID: 8745128

Claim:
A method for determining from a plurality of distributed servers operated by a hosting system, a server to optimally distribute content to a particular end user, the method comprising: receiving a domain name system (DNS) request comprising the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the particular end user in addition to or instead of the IP address of a DNS resolver used by the particular end user; extracting the IP address of the particular end user from the DNS request; identifying sets of performance metrics measuring performance related to distribution of content to the IP address of the particular end user from each server of a set of the plurality of distributed servers of the hosting system; determining a particular server from the set of distributed servers that optimally distributes content to the particular end user by analyzing the sets of performance metrics; and modifying a configuration for resolving the DNS request from the particular end user such that an IP address of the particular server that optimally distributes content to the particular end user is provided in response to the DNS request.