Patent ID: 8681758

Claim:
A method for video caching in a wireless communication network, the method comprising: determining a starting point and an ending point of a path to be taken by a mobile device through a wireless local area network of access points, the path including a service area of a starting access point and a service area of an ending access point; establishing a route with a minimum path length between the starting point and the ending point; identifying service areas of intermediate access points along the route; polling the access points along the route for their respective available bandwidth and amount of cache memory that is already being used out of its total available cache memory; defining a streaming capacity of each access point; selecting those access points having an additive streaming capacity that totals greater or equal to a size of a video file to be downloaded to the mobile device, wherein selecting includes listing the access points in order of decreasing ratio of available bandwidth to the amount of cache memory that is already being used out of its total available cache memory, and adding the streaming capacities of each access point in the list in succession until the additive streaming capacity totals greater or equal to a size of a video file to be downloaded to the mobile device; sending instructions to each selected access point to cache a defined number of sequential blocks of the video file; and downloading the blocks from each selected access point to the mobile device as the mobile device traverses a service area of that selected access point.