Large Scale Distributed Content Delivery Network

• US 20100094967A1
• Filed: 10/14/2009
• Published: 04/15/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Aster RISK Management LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Patentvc Limited
• Inventors: Thieberger, Gil, Zuckerman, Gal
• Application Number:
  US12/579,403
• Publication Number:
  US 20100094967A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

A large scale distributed streaming system including at least several hundreds of fractional-storage CDN servers located close to or on the Internet backbone, storing erasure-coded fragments encoded with a redundancy factor greater than one and associated with approximately sequential segments of streaming contents. The system further includes at least 100,000 assembling devices configured to concurrently obtain fragments from the CDN servers. Wherein the system achieves efficient load balancing and fault tolerance between the various CDN servers by determining for each of the assembling devices from which servers to obtain the fragments.

Claims

1. ) A system comprising:

a plurality of data centers located close to or on the Internet backbone, together comprising at least 100 fractional-storage CDN servers;

the servers store erasure-coded fragments associated with approximately sequential segments of streaming contents, with a storage gain >

5, and transmit the stored fragments on demand to assembling devices approximately according to the sequential order of the segments.

2. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the servers transmit the stored fragments in response to fragment pull protocol requests.

3. ) The system of claim 2, wherein the fragment pull protocol is a fragment pull protocol for high latency.

4. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the servers transmit the stored fragments via at least two sub-transmissions.

5. ) The system of claim 1, wherein receiving the transmission approximately according to the sequential order of the segments enables the assembling device to progressively download the streaming content.

6. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the erasure-coding is rateless-coding potentially resulting in fragments having a limitless redundancy factor.

7. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the system is a first tier CDN providing streaming contents to assembling devices spread around the globe;

and the system comprises more than 1,000 CDN servers servicing at least one million assembling devices concurrently.

8. ) A streaming system comprising:

at least several hundreds of fractional-storage CDN servers located close to or on the Internet backbone, storing erasure-coded fragments associated with approximately sequential segments of streaming contents; and

at least 100,000 assembling devices configured to concurrently obtain fragments from the CDN servers;

wherein the system achieves efficient load balancing and fault tolerance between the various CDN servers by determining for each assembling device from which servers to obtain the fragments.

9. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein each assembling device determines from which servers to obtain the fragments.

10. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein at least one control server determines for each assembling device from which servers to obtain the fragments.

11. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein the storage gain of the fractional-storage CDN servers >

5, and the erasure-coding is rateless-coding.

12. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein the assembling devices use a fragment pull protocol to obtain the fragments.

13. ) The streaming system of claim 12, wherein each assembling device is configured to obtain the fragments at an average rate that at least enables uninterrupted progressive download of the streaming contents.

14. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein each assembling device is configured to obtain the fragments via at least two sub-transmissions.

15. ) The streaming system of claim 8, wherein the CDN servers do not actively participate in load balancing the system, and simply respond to requests to transmit one or more fragments.

16. ) A system comprising:

at least 1,000 fractional-storage CDN servers connected to the public Internet;

the servers store erasure-coded fragments associated with approximately sequential segments of streaming contents, with a storage gain >

5, and transmit the stored fragments on demand to assembling devices approximately according to the sequential order of the segments;

wherein the aggregated bandwidth utilized by the servers for transmitting the fragments to the assembling devices exceeds 1 Giga bit per second times the number of the CDN servers.

17. ) The system of claim 16, wherein the aggregated bandwidth can be utilized to transmit fragments to almost any region of the world.

18. ) The system of claim 16, wherein the aggregated bandwidth is seamlessly supplemented using peer-to-peer devices.

19. ) The system of claim 16, wherein the servers are approximately homogeneously distributed over the regions to which they deliver service.

20. ) The system of claim 16, wherein the system comprises at least 10,000 fractional-storage CDN servers and the aggregated bandwidth utilized by the servers exceeds 10 Giga bit per second times the number of the CDN servers.