Patent ID: 8782116

Claim:
A method of processing digital data constituting a signal in a distributed communication network comprising a plurality of communication apparatuses, the signal being identified by a unique identifier (ID), wherein the method comprises the following steps: storing in a first cache memory location of a communication apparatus the signal; storing in one or more second memory locations of the communication apparatus distinct from the first cache memory location one or more exploitable parts of the signal in a format readable by an application, so that each exploitable part of the signal is directly exploitable by a user, wherein at least one of said exploitable parts of the signal comprises less than the entirety of the signal, and wherein the one or more second memory locations are chosen by the user and the exploitable part of the signal is stored at an arbitrary address of the second memory location chosen by the user; associating the unique identifier of the signal with each respective stored exploitable part of the signal stored in the one or more second memory locations; and storing in at least one communication apparatus a data structure establishing a link between each respective exploitable part of the signal stored in the one or more second memory locations and the unique identifier of the signal stored in the first cache memory location, wherein the data structure also establishes a link between each exploitable part of the signal and an index representing the data present in the part considered, and the method further comprises the following steps performed by the communication apparatus or apparatuses in which the one or more exploitable parts of the signal are stored; a prior reception of at least some data constituting the signal stored in the first cache memory; and managing, after the prior reception, memory locations, wherein data received that is stored in the first cache memory location, which are determined to be contained in the exploitable part or parts of the signal stored respectively in the one or more second memory locations chosen by the user, are deleted from the first cache memory location in a case where the data received and the exploitable part or parts are in the same format, or in a case where the data received and the exploitable part or parts are not in the same format but can be passed from the format of the exploitable part or parts to the format of the data received without a loss of information.