Patent ID: 7296074

Claim:
A method, processed by a computing device, for establishing and re-using sessions for the delivery of media content from at least one server to any of a plurality of client devices, comprising the steps of: establishing a first session with a first client device by allocating network resources to the first session for the delivery of a first instance of media content, at least one of the network resources having corresponding resource descriptors and corresponding resource descriptor attributes; receiving a session request to allocate network resources to a second client device in order to deliver a second instance of media content, the session request including information associated with requested network resources for delivering the second instance of media content; determining whether the first session can be re-used to satisfy the session request, without releasing the network resources of the first session, by comparing at least one resource descriptor attribute of the first session to the information associated with the requested network resources for delivering the second instance of media content; re-using the first session by allocating the network resources of the first session to satisfy the session request responsive to determining that the first session can be re-used to satisfy the session request; and delivering the second instance of media content using the network resources of the first session.