Patent ID: 7912921

Claim:
A server, comprising: a media serving engine to distribute media content; a cache engine coupled to the media serving engine, the cache engine to cache the media content; a storage device to store a plurality of server policies, each server policy defining operating characteristics of the server, with one of the plurality of server policies being a currently active server policy, the plurality of server policies comprising a first server policy determining the server is to operate as a cache server and further comprising a second server policy, defined by a system administrator, determining the server is to operate as an origin server, the plurality of server policies comprising: prefetching policies for causing the cache server to identify a media content, determine a particular time period during which the media content should be downloaded, and download the media content from the origin server without yet receiving a request for the media content; and frequency policies such that for each time the request is made for the media content, the frequency policies cause the cache server to determine a version of the media content and whether the version of the media content is acceptable or a new version of the media content is to be downloaded from the origin server; a processor coupled to the storage device, the processor to control operation of the server based on the currently active server policy and the second server policy, wherein the media serving engine distributes the media content to a plurality of client devices while concurrently ignoring the first cache policy to operate as the cache server and implementing the second cache policy to operate as the origin server, the origin server being a source of the media content.