Patent ID: 8756297

Claim:
A computer-executable method, comprising: receiving, by a computing device serving as a backup custodian to one or more mobile devices, a request for a piece of content from a requesting device, based on a preference level of the computing device being higher than a preference level of a mobile device storing the content, wherein the request identifies the content by name without using the computing device's network address; determining whether the content is available on the computing device; in response to the content not being available on the computing device: performing a lookup in a content-prefix-to-custodian mapping to identify a mobile device that stores the content; performing a custodian-to-communication-endpoint lookup and a communication-endpoint-to-network-address lookup to determine a network address for the content; verifying that the computing device satisfies one or more conditions for accessing a namespace specified by the content name's prefix, wherein the namespace is associated with the mobile device's communication endpoint; and sending a request to the identified mobile device to obtain the content from the identified mobile device; responsive to receiving the content from the identified mobile device, caching the content on the computing device to facilitate providing the content in response to subsequent requests without connecting to the identified mobile device; and providing the content to the requesting device.