Patent ID: 7747777

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: one or more processors; Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) logic encoded in one or more tangible media for execution and when executed operable to store IGP information, wherein the IGP information includes a set of attribute values associated with each of a set of content servers; and selection logic encoded in one or more tangible media for execution and, when executed by the one or more processors, operable to: receive a request for content from a remote peer; determine one or more content servers, of the set of content servers, that are operable to provide the content; retrieve, from the IGP information, a plurality of attribute values associated with a non-looping path from each content server of the one or more content servers, wherein the plurality of attribute values associated with said each content server include: one or more capacity values indicating capacities of one or more communication links on the non-looping path from said each content server; and one or more utilization values indicating utilizations of the one or more communication links on the non-looping path from said each content server; select a particular content server of the one or more content servers based on the plurality of attribute values retrieved for each content server of the one or more content servers; and cause the request for the content to be sent to the particular content server.