Patent ID: 8499055

Claim:
A master server, the master server in communication with a plurality of slave servers, the master server comprising: a storage device operable to store multimedia files and a status table storing a status for each of the plurality of slave servers; a request receiving module operable to receive a decoding request to decode the multimedia file from a web server; a task assignment module operable to calculate a network utilization rate of each of the plurality of slave servers in the status table according to a formula of k0×m0+k1×m1+k2×m2+k3×m3+k4×m4, select one slave server with the minimum network utilization rate, and assign a decoding task to the selected slave server to process the decoding request, “k0” representing a current central processing unit (CPU) usage of a slave server, “k1” representing a current graphic processing unit (GPU) usage of the slave server, “k2” representing a current memory usage of the slave server, “k3” representing a current network load of the slave server, “k4” representing a current thread number of the slave server, and “m0”, “m1”, “m2”, “m3”, and “m4” representing weighting coefficients; and a status updating module operable to update the status of the selected slave server in the status table upon the condition that the selected slave server receives the assigned decoding task.