CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK

• US 20090157899A1
• Filed: 12/12/2008
• Published: 06/18/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: StackPath LLC
• Original Assignee: Highwinds Holdings, Inc.
• Inventors: Gagliardi, Joshua D., Munger, Timothy S., Ploesser, Donald W.
• Granted Patent: US 8,200,810 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/235
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A content delivery system for providing content from a content delivery network to end users may include a plurality of delivery servers that host one or more content items and an inventory server having an inventory of content. The inventory of content can indicate which of the delivery servers host the content items. The inventory server may receive a request for a content item from an end user system and may access the inventory of content to determine one or more delivery servers that host the content item. In response to this determination, the inventory server may redirect the request for the content item to a selected one of the delivery servers. The selected delivery server can then serve the content item to the end user system.

Claims

1. A system for providing media owners with media delivery reports showing statistics of each media file delivered, the system comprising:

a plurality of delivery servers in a content delivery network, each of the delivery servers delivering media files to users over the Internet, the media files being owned by a plurality of different media owners, each of the delivery servers being programmed to;

log the time, date, file size in bytes, delivered bytes in case of partial delivery, and delivery duration of each media file delivered to the user over the internet, for each event when a media file is delivered to a user, and

analyze the log events to generate an event report for each media file including the number of deliveries of any portion of each media file according to the time of day and date, and the total number of bytes of each media file delivered, and

provide event reports to a usage server;

the usage server being programmed to;

receive the event reports from each of the delivery servers,

combine the event reports from each of the delivery servers into combined event reports, such that the amount of each media file delivered by the plurality of delivery servers is summed to reflect a cumulative total amount of each media file delivered by the plurality of delivery servers, and

provide the combined event reports to a billing server;

the billing server being programmed to;

combine the combined event reports with historical log event data stored in a provider database to produce overall delivery statistics,

calculate a delivery completion percentage for each media file by dividing the total amount of bytes of each media file delivered by the size of the respective media file; and

output a content user interface for display to each of the content owners, the content user interface displaying the delivery completion percentage for each media file, so that each media owner can determine which of the media files are being completely delivered to end users as well as the respective average proportions of the media files that are only partially delivered to users, thereby enabling the media owners to determine which of the media files are more often viewed in their entirety by users and which are only partially viewed by the users.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the usage server is also programmed to determine a geographic region of each network address of each user that accessed content and to combine the geographic region information with each combined event report.

3. A system for cross-tabulating content usage information at multiple nodes of a content delivery network architecture, the system comprising:

a plurality of delivery servers in a content delivery network, each of the delivery servers operative to provide access to content, each of the delivery servers comprising one or more processors operative to;

determine usage data, the usage data comprising information corresponding to delivery of content from the delivery server, the content being hosted by the delivery servers on behalf of one or more content providers, each of the one or more content providers having an account with an operator of the content delivery network,

batch at least a portion of the usage data to produce first batched usage data, the first batched usage data comprising a summary of the usage data, and

provide the first batched usage data to a usage server;

the usage server operative to receive the first batched usage data from each of the delivery servers, to batch the first batched usage data from each of the delivery servers into second batched usage data, and to provide the second batched usage data to a billing server; and

the billing server operative to cross-tabulate the second batched usage data with usage data stored in a provider database to produce overall usage data.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the usage data comprises data for a plurality of delivery attributes.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the usage attributes comprise an amount of a content item that was successfully delivered.

6. The system of claim 3, further comprising a user interface module operative to output at least a portion of the overall usage data for display.

7. A system for tracking content deliveries in a content delivery network, the system comprising:

a plurality of delivery servers in a content delivery network, the delivery servers comprising computer hardware, each of the delivery servers operative to;

track delivery data corresponding to content deliveries performed by the delivery server,

cross-tabulate the delivery data to produce condensed delivery data, and

provide the condensed delivery data to a usage server; and

the usage server operative to cross-tabulate the condensed delivery data received from each of the delivery servers to produce second condensed delivery data.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the delivery data comprises data for a plurality of delivery attributes.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the delivery attributes comprise a number of requests for a content item.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the delivery attributes comprise a delivery amount attribute reflecting an amount of a content item that was successfully delivered.

11. The system of claim 8, further comprising a billing server operative to obtain the second condensed delivery data from the usage server and to calculate a completion percentage for a plurality of content items based at least in part on the delivery amount attribute.

12. The system of claim 7, wherein the usage server is further operative to cross-tabulate the condensed delivery data by determining a geographic region corresponding to each network address of an end user system that accessed content.

13. The system of claim 7, wherein said cross-tabulation is operative to cause the volume of the condensed delivery data to stay approximately the same despite an increase in network traffic.

14. The system of claim 7, wherein each of the delivery servers is further operative to persistently store the delivery data on the delivery server.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein said storing is performed in response to determining that a connection with the usage server cannot be established.

16. A method for tracking content delivery information in a content delivery network, the method comprising:

receiving, with a first usage server comprising one or more processors, first delivery data corresponding to first content deliveries performed by a first delivery server, the first delivery data comprising information about deliveries of content by the first delivery server;

receiving, with the first usage server, second delivery data corresponding to second content deliveries performed by a second delivery server;

combining, using the one or more processors of the first usage server, the first and second delivery data received from the first and second delivery servers to produce first summarized delivery data; and

providing the first summarized delivery data to a billing server, the billing server configured to combine the first summarized delivery data with second summarized delivery data received from a second usage server to produce combined delivery data, and to store the combined delivery data in a provider database comprising physical computer storage.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the first delivery data comprises cross-tabulated delivery information corresponding to a plurality of content deliveries.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein a volume of the first summarized delivery data is not greater than a combined volume of the first and second delivery data.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the first delivery data comprises a data value representing a total number of content deliveries for a content provider.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the first delivery data comprises a data value representing a total size of content deliveries for a content provider.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein said combining comprises batching the first and second delivery data.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein as network traffic increases in the content delivery network, the volume of the accumulated delivery data stays approximately the same.

23. The method of claim 16, wherein as network traffic increases in the content delivery network, the volume of the accumulated delivery data increases at a slower rate than a rate of increase in the network traffic.