Patent ID: 8122102

Claim:
A method of content delivery, comprising: establishing a content delivery network on behalf of participating content providers, the content delivery network managed by a content delivery network service provider and comprising a plurality of content servers and a domain name service (DNS); associating a content provider domain or subdomain with a domain managed by the content delivery network service provider so that DNS queries to the content provider domain or subdomain are resolved by the content delivery network domain name service; resolving a DNS query to the content provider domain or subdomain to an IP address associated with a given content server in the plurality of content servers, wherein the DNS query is resolved by the content delivery network domain name service using the domain managed by the content delivery network service provider in lieu of the content provider domain or subdomain; at the given content server of the plurality of content servers in the content delivery network, receiving a request for a piece of content; determining whether the piece of content is available to be served from the given content server in the content delivery network; if the piece of content is available to be served from the given content server, having the given content server issue a validation request to an origin server that is authoritative for the piece of content; and upon receipt at the given content server of an indication that the origin server has validated the piece of content in response to the validation request, serving the piece of content from the given content server.