Patent ID: 8874775

Claim:
A method for load-balancing fractional-storage CDN servers and assembling devices, comprising: pulling essentially concurrently, by an assembling device using a fragment pull protocol, erasure-coded fragments associated with segments of streaming content, from a set of fractional-storage CDN servers; each fragment pull protocol associated with a specific segment; each fractional-storage CDN server configured to store erasure-coded fragments but less than a minimum amount of erasure-coded fragments needed to decode the stored erasure-coded fragments; a total outgoing bandwidth of the set of fractional-storage CDN servers divided by a number of the set of fractional-storage CDN servers is at least 100 times a total outgoing bandwidth of assembling devices divided by a number of the assembling devices; although each fractional-storage CDN server has a high outgoing bandwidth, the set of fractional-storage CDN servers from which the assembling device is pulling the erasure-coded fragments comprises multiple fractional-storage CDN servers; occasionally, while pulling the erasure-coded fragments, identifying at least one fractional-storage CDN server from the set of fractional-storage CDN servers, but less than an entire set of fractional-storage CDN servers, which is loaded to a degree requiring replacement; and while continuing to pull from other fractional-storage CDN servers in the set of fractional-storage CDN servers, replacing, by the assembling device using the fragment pull protocol, the identified at least one fractional-storage CDN server with at least one substitute fractional-storage CDN server that is not loaded to the degree requiring replacement and that is already serving multiple other assembling devices with fragments.