Patent ID: 8782279

Claim:
A content delivery network (CDN) for delivering content to computing devices, the CDN comprising: a plurality of points of presence (POPs) distributed geographically with respect to each other, each of the plurality of POPs comprising a plurality of content caches; a domain name service (DNS) to assist in resolving addresses used for delivering content, wherein: the DNS analyzes a first parameter in a first subdomain field for a first DNS request to return a first IP address to a first computing device, the DNS analyzes a second parameter in a second subdomain field for a second DNS request to return a second IP address to a second computing device, the first and second parameters being different, the first and second DNS requests are for a content object, the DNS determines popularity of the content object, the first and second IP addresses are selected from a plurality of IP addresses as a function of popularity, and the first and second IP addresses result in the CDN serving the content object from two different content caches of the plurality of content caches.