CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK WITH CUSTOMIZED TRACKING OF DELIVERY DATA

• US 20100306368A1
• Filed: 08/20/2009
• Published: 12/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Highwinds Holdings, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Highwinds Holdings, Inc.
• Inventors: Ploesser, Donald W., Spencer, Deborah A., Gagliardi, Joshua D., Munger, Timothy S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,489,731 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data

Abstract

A custom tracking system can provide functionality for operators of content sites to specify types of content delivery data to be tracked in a content delivery network. The custom tracking system can propagate operator tracking preferences to edge nodes in the content delivery network, such as delivery servers, which can track delivery data according to the preferences. The custom tracking system can use one or more tracking filters to reduce the storage burden of certain tracking requests while still providing relevant results. The custom tracking system can output results of the custom tracking for presentation to the content site operator.

Claims

1. A method of allowing an operator of a content site to specify content delivery statistics to be gathered by a content delivery network, the method comprising:

hosting content associated with a content site on a content delivery network, the content delivery network comprising one or more delivery servers operative to deliver the content to end users of the content site;

outputting a custom tracking user interface for presentation to the operator of the content site with one or more processors, the custom tracking user interface providing functionality for the operator of the content site to specify one or more types of content delivery data to be tracked by the content delivery network;

receiving a custom tracking request from the content site operator with the custom tracking user interface, the custom tracking request identifying a selected type of content delivery data to be tracked;

instructing the one or more delivery servers to track the selected type of content delivery data;

receiving content delivery data from the one or more delivery servers; and

outputting a reporting user interface comprising at least a portion of the content delivery data for presentation to the content site operator.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said second user interface is further configured to allow the user to specify one or more sources of the delivery data to be accessed.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the one or more sources of the delivery data comprise one or more of the following:

IP addresses of the end users, geographic codings of IP addresses, query strings, HTTP cookies, headers, referrers, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) cache.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein said instructing the one or more delivery servers comprises instructing the one or more delivery servers to access key-value data associated with the specified one or more sources.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the key-value data comprises one or more of the following:

user preferences, end user device types, end user operating system types, end user demographic information, affiliate marketing codes, and redirections to user information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the second user interface further comprises functionality for the operator of the content site to specify one or more reporting formats of the content delivery data to be shown in the reporting user interface.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the one or more reporting formats include one or more of the following:

a table, a histogram, a percentage, a ratio, a sum, and a map.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the types of content delivery data to be tracked to the one or more delivery servers comprises communicating the types of delivery data using a web service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the reporting user interface is configured to push the content delivery data to a computer system of the operator of the content site.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising cross-tabulating the delivery data with the one or more delivery servers to produce condensed delivery data and providing the condensed delivery data from the one or more delivery servers to a usage server, such that as delivery traffic increases in the content delivery network, a volume of the cross-tabulated delivery data increases at a slower rate than a rate of increase in the delivery traffic.

11. A system for allowing an operator of a content site to specify content delivery data to be gathered by a content delivery network, the system comprising:

a content management module executing on a content delivery network, the content management module operative to provide a first user interface accessible by an operator of a content site, the first user interface providing functionality for the operator of the content site to upload content to a content delivery network, the content delivery network operative to deliver the content to end users of the content site from one or more delivery servers in response to receiving requests to serve the content, the one or more delivery servers being edge nodes in the content delivery network;

a custom tracking module, the custom tracking module operative to output a second user interface for display to the operator of the content site with one or more processors, the second user interface providing functionality for the operator of the content site to specify types of content delivery data to be tracked by the content delivery network, the second user interface further operative to provide the types of content delivery data to be tracked to the one or more delivery servers, such that the one or more delivery servers are operative to obtain the content delivery data; and

a reporting module operative to output the content delivery data for presentation to the operator of the content site in a reporting user interface.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein said second user interface is further configured to allow the user to specify sources of data to be accessed when obtaining the content delivery data.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the sources of the data comprise one or more of the following:

IP addresses of the end users, geographic codings of the IP addresses, query strings, HTTP cookies, HTTP headers, and HTTP referrers.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the data comprises one or more of the following:

key-value pairs, user preferences, end user device types, end user operating system types, end user demographic information, and affiliate marketing codes.

15. A method of tracking usage data in a content delivery network based at least partly on tracking preferences specified by an operator of a content site, the method comprising:

receiving delivery tracking preferences from an operator of a content site with a delivery server, the delivery tracking preferences specifying one or more types of content delivery data to be tracked by the delivery server, the delivery server being a node in a content delivery network, wherein the delivery server hosts content for the content site;

providing the content to one or more users of the content site with the delivery server;

tracking the specified types of content delivery data with the delivery server; and

submitting the content delivery data to another node in the content delivery network to enable the operator of the content site to obtain access to the content delivery data.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein said tracking comprises using a tracking filter to determine the amount of content delivery data that exceeds a threshold.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein said using the tracking filter comprises applying a parallel multistage filter to the content delivery data.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the delivery tracking preferences further specify sources of the types of delivery data to be accessed by the delivery server.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the sources of the types of delivery data comprise one or more of the following:

IP addresses of the one or more users, geographic codings of the IP addresses, query strings, HTTP cookies, HTTP headers, and HTTP referrers.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the delivery data comprises one or more of the following:

a number of requests for the content, an amount of the content delivered, key-value data, IP addresses of the one or more users, an affiliate code, location data of the one or more users, user preferences, end user device types, end user operating system types, and demographic data of the one or more users.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein the delivery tracking preferences specify one or more mathematical operations to perform on the delivery data.

22. A method of allowing content site operators to change a type of delivery data tracked by edge nodes in a content delivery network, the method comprising:

collecting a first type of delivery data with one or more delivery servers in a content delivery network, the first type of delivery data comprising information associated with deliveries of content to end users of a content site, the content being hosted by the content delivery network on behalf of the content site;

providing an operator of the content site with an option to change the first type of content data to be tracked to a custom type of delivery data to be tracked;

in response to receiving a request from the content site operator specifying a second type of delivery data to be tracked, changing with one or more processors the first type of content data to be tracked to the second type of delivery data to be tracked; and

tracking the second type of delivery data with the one or more delivery servers.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein said providing the operator of the content site with the option comprises allowing the user to specify one or more sources of the second type of delivery data.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the one or more sources of the delivery data comprise one or more of the following:

IP addresses of the end users, geographic codings of IP addresses, query strings, HTTP cookies, headers, referrers, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) cache.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein the second type of delivery data to be tracked comprises one or more of the following:

key-value pairs, user preferences, end user device types, end user operating system types, end user demographic information, and affiliate marketing codes.

26. The method of claim 22, wherein said providing the operator of the content site with the option comprises providing a custom tracking interface to the content site operator.