Network performance monitoring in a content delivery system

• US 20130179567A1
• Filed: 03/04/2013
• Published: 07/11/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 07/20/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Leighton, F. Thomson, Dhanidina, Rizwan S., Kleinberg, Robert D., Levine, Matthew, Lewin, Daniel M., Soviani, Adrian, Sundaram, Ravi, Parker, Amdrew
• Granted Patent: US 9,300,560 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/30 Types of network names
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/69 using geographic information, e.g. room number
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5058 Service discovery by the service manager
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/509 wherein the managed service relates to media content delivery, e.g. audio, video or TV
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/289 Intermediate processing functionally located close to the data consumer application, e.g. in same machine, in same home or in same sub-network
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information

Abstract

A method for Internet delivery in a delivery network established at network locations, the delivery network comprising a plurality of content servers for serving resources. The servers include a plurality of subsets, each subset being located at one of a plurality of Internet data centers. For each Internet Protocol (IP) address block from which requests for content resources are expected to be received, the method generates a candidate list of data centers to be used to service the requests. For the IP address block, the method selects at least one of the data centers from the candidate list. The selected Internet data center for the IP address block is written into a network map. In response to a DNS query, the map is used to identify one of the Internet data centers from the candidate list to be used to service a request for a content resource.

Claims

1. In combination, a set of computing entities, the set comprising:

a set of content servers for serving content resources, wherein the set of content servers includes a plurality of subsets of content servers, each subset located at one of a plurality of Internet data centers;

a network map generator to generate a network map; and

a domain name service that responds to a DNS query directed to a hostname for which the domain name service is authoritative and in response uses the network map to identify an Internet data center to be used to service a request for a content resource.