Patent ID: 7849196

Claim:
A method of managing connections at a node in a peer-to-peer content distribution cloud, said method comprising: (i) monitoring traffic on connections at the node for a specified first time period; (ii) allocating as being in a notify state any idle connections at the node over which content has been requested from a neighbor but is not present at that neighbor; (iii) tearing down any connections at the node which have been idle for at least that specified first time period and which are not in the notify state; and (iv) once every specified interval, selecting one of the connections at the node in a substantially random manner from at least a subset of the connections at the node and tearing down that connection; wherein said monitoring traffic on connections at the node further comprises obtaining information about relative content distribution over those connections; and wherein said subset of the connections at the node excludes the connection where the monitored relative content distribution over that connection is the lowest.