System and Method for Streaming Content from Multiple Servers

• US 20160337426A1
• Filed: 04/04/2016
• Published: 11/17/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 05/14/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bright Data, Ltd. (f/k/a Luminati Networks)
• Original Assignee: Hola Networks Ltd.
• Inventors: Shribman, Derry, Vilenski, Ofer
• Granted Patent: US 11,057,446 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/65 Network streaming protocols, e.g. real-time transport protocol [RTP] or real-time control protocol [RTCP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/752 adapting media to network capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4622 Retrieving content or additional data from different sources, e.g. from a broadcast channel and the Internet web site content organization and management for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/958; transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82; stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services including data channel over packet-switching network H04L12/1859
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8456 by decomposing the content in the time domain, e.g. in time segments

Abstract

A system and a method for media streaming from multiple sources are disclosed. A content requesting client device accesses a server to receive a list of available sources that may include multiple Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and independent servers. Based on a pre-set criteria, such as the source delivery performance and cost, the client device partitions the content into parts, allocates a source to each part, and simultaneously receives media streams of the content parts from the allocated sources. The server may be a Video-on-Demand (VOD) server, and the content may be a single file of a video data, such as a movie. The delivery performance of the used sources is measured during the streaming for updating the partition or the allocation. The updated measured performance may be stored locally at the client device, or at a server for use by other clients. The client actions may be implemented as a client-side script.

Claims

1. A server for streaming multiple content items to a client device over the Internet, each content item comprises a streaming media data and is identified by a content item identifier and composed of first and second distinct content parts, wherein the first content part comprises the beginning of the respective content playing data, the server comprising a memory storing only the first content parts of the multiple content items, and operative to:

receive, from the client device, a first request for a first content of one of the multiple content items using the respective content item identifier; and

stream, to the client device in response to the first request, the first part of the first content.

2. The server according to claim 1, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, 0.05%, 0.07%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 7%, or 10% of the respective content size.

3. The server according to claim 1, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, 0.05%, 0.07%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 7%, or 10% of the respective content size.

4. The server according to claim 1, wherein the playing time of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 50 seconds.

5. The server according to claim 1, wherein the playing time of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 50 seconds.

6. The server according to claim 1, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 100 KB, 200 KB, 300 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, 1.5 MB, 2 MB, 3 MB, 4 MB, or 5 MB.

7. The server according to claim 1, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 100 KB, 200 KB, 300 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, 1.5 MB, 2 MB, 3 MB, 4 MB, or 5 MB.

8. The server according to claim 1, for use with additional multiple content items, each content item of the additional multiple content items comprises a streaming media data and is identified by a content item identifier and composed of first and second distinct content parts, wherein the memory is composed of first and second memory parts, the first memory part stores the first part of the multiple content items and the second memory part stores the first and second content parts of the additional multiple content items.

9. The server according to claim 8, further operative to:

receive, from the client device, a second request for a second content of one of the additional multiple content items using the respective content item identifier; and

stream, to the client device in response to the second request, the first and second parts of the second content.

10. The server according to claim 8, wherein the size of the first memory part is at least 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95% of the total memory size.

11. The server according to claim 8, wherein the size of the first memory part is less than 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95% of the total memory size.

12. The server according to claim 8, wherein the size of the first memory part is more than 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 350%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 550%, 600% of the size of the second memory part.

13. The server according to claim 8, wherein the size of the first memory part is less than 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 350%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 550%, 600% of the size of the second memory part.

14. The server according to claim 8, wherein the number of distinct content items in the multiple content items is more than the number of distinct content items in the additional multiple content items.

15. The server according to claim 14, wherein the number of distinct content items in the multiple content items is more than 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 800, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 the number of distinct content items in the additional multiple content items.

16. The server according to claim 14, wherein the number of the distinct content items in the multiple content items is less than 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 800, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 the number of the distinct content items in the additional multiple content items.

17. A system comprising multiple servers that are coupled over the Internet, wherein each server is according to claim 8.

18. The system according to claim 17, further cooperative to form a Content Delivery Network (CDN) wherein each server of the multiple servers serves as a replica server in the CDN.

19. The system according to claim 17, further operative to stream to the client device the second content item of the one of the multiple content items identified by the content item identifier from a distinct server from the multiple servers.

20. The server according to claim 1, wherein the server is a web server.

21. The server according to claim 1, wherein the streaming is based on, using, compatible with, or according to, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

22. The server according to claim 1, wherein the streaming is based on, using, or according to, progressive download.

23. The server according to claim 1, wherein the streaming is based on, using, or according to, adaptive bit-rate streaming.

24. The server according to claim 23, wherein the streaming is based on, using, compatible with, or according to, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), or HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS).

25. The server according to claim 1, further comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium containing computer instructions that, when executed or interpreted by a processor, cause the processor to perform at least the receiving from the client device and the streaming to the client device.

26. The server according to claim 25, wherein the computer instructions are using a programming language.

27. The server according to claim 26, wherein the programming language is an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) language that supports scripting.

28. The server according to claim 27, wherein the programming language is based on, compatible with, or according to, C, C++, Objective-C, Perl, REXX, VBScript, JavaScript, or Java.

29. The server according to claim 1, further storing, operating, or using, a server operating system.

30. The server according to claim 29, wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, compatible with, or based on, one out of Microsoft Windows Server®

, Linux, or UNIX.

31. The server according to claim 30, wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, compatible with, or based on, one out of Microsoft Windows Server®

2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 variant, Linux™

or GNU/Linux-based Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/Hurd, Fedora™

, Gentoo™

, Linspire™

, Mandriva, Red Hat®

Linux, SuSE, and Ubuntu®

, UNIX®

variant Solaris™

, AIX®

, Mac™

OS X, FreeBSD®

, OpenBSD, and NetBSD®

.

32. The server according to claim 1, wherein at least one of the items identifiers is an IP address or a URL.

33. The server according to claim 32, wherein each of all of the items identifiers is an IP address or a URL.

34. The server according to claim 32, wherein the IP address is in IPv4 or IPv6 form.

35. The server according to claim 1, wherein the server is a web server using HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that responds to HTTP requests via the Internet, and, wherein all of the requests are HTTP request.

36. The server according to claim 35, wherein the communication of the client device with at least one server is based on, or using an HTTP persistent connection.

37. The server according to claim 35, wherein the communication of the client device with at least one server is based on, or using, a TCP/IP protocol or connection.

38. The server according to claim 1, wherein the requests for the first and the second content parts are based on or are according to, a byte or range serving.

39. The server according to claim 38, wherein the byte or range serving is based on, or using, the HTTP/1.1 range request scheme that is based on, is compatible with, or is according to, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 2616 or RFC 7233.

40. The server according to claim 1, wherein each of the multiple content items comprises a compressed media data according to a compression scheme.

41. The server according to claim 40, wherein the compression scheme uses lossy or lossless compression.

42. The server according to claim 40, wherein the compression scheme uses intraframe or interframe compression.

43. The server according to claim 40, wherein the compression scheme uses a standard compression scheme that is based on, compatible with, or according to, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), ITU-T H.261, ITU-T H.263, ITU-T H.264, or ITU-T CCIR 601.

44. The server according to claim 1, wherein the streaming media data includes digital multimedia, digital audio, or digital video data.

45. The server according to claim 44, wherein the digital video is in a format that is based on, compatible with, or is according to, TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), RAW, AVI, DV, DV-PAL, HDV, MOV, WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DCF (Design Rule for Camera Format), ITU-T H.261, ITU-T H.263, ITU-T H.264, ITU-T CCIR 601, ASF, Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format), or DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) standard.

46. The server according to claim 44, wherein the digital video data is in a High-Definition (HD) or Standard-Definition (SD) format.

47. The server according to claim 44, wherein the digital video data is based on, compatible with, or according to, ISO/IEC 14496 standard, MPEG-4 standard, or ITU-T H.264 standard.

48. The server according to claim 44, wherein the digital video data includes or is part of, a movie.

49. A method for streaming content to client devices over the Internet, for use with multiple content items, each of the content items comprises a streaming media data, is identified by a content item identifier, and composed of first and second distinct content parts, wherein the first part comprises the beginning of the respective content item playing data, and for use with a server device having a memory that stores the first part of each of the multiple content items, and the second part of each of a part of the multiple content items, the method by the server device comprising the steps of:

receiving, from a first client device, a first request for a first part of a first content item using the content item identifier;

checking, by the server device, if the first part of a first content item is stored in the server device; and

in response to the first part of the first content item being stored in the server device, streaming the first part of the first content item to the first client device.

50. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, 0.05%, 0.07%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 7%, or 10% of the respective content item size.

51. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.03%, 0.05%, 0.07%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 7%, or 10% of the respective content item size.

52. The method according to claim 49, wherein the playing time of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 50 seconds.

53. The method according to claim 49, wherein the playing time of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 50 seconds.

54. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is less than 100 KB, 200 KB, 300 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, 1.5 MB, 2 MB, 3 MB, 4 MB, or 5 MB.

55. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of each of the first part of each of the multiple content items is more than 100 KB, 200 KB, 300 KB, 500 KB, 1 MB, 1.5 MB, 2 MB, 3 MB, 4 MB, or 5 MB.

56. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of the first parts of the multiple content items is at least 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95% of the total memory size.

57. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of the first parts of the multiple content items is less than 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95% of the total memory size.

58. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of the first parts of the multiple content items is more than 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 350%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 550%, 600% of the size of the second parts of the part of the multiple content items.

59. The method according to claim 49, wherein the size of the first parts of the multiple content items is less than 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 350%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 550%, 600% of the size of the second parts of the part of the multiple content items.

60. The method according to claim 49, wherein the number of distinct content items in the multiple content items is more than the number of distinct content items in the part of the multiple content items.

61. The method according to claim 60, wherein the number of distinct content items in the multiple content items is more than 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 800, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 the number of distinct content items in the part of the multiple content items.

62. The method according to claim 60, wherein the number of distinct content items in the multiple content items is less than 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 800, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 the number of distinct content items in the part of the multiple content items.

63. The method according to claim 49, further comprising the steps of:

receiving, from a second client device, a second request for a second content item, or a part thereof, using a second content item identifier;

checking, by the server device, if the second content item, or the part thereof, is stored in the server device; and

in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, being stored in the server device, streaming, to the second client device, the second content item, or the part thereof.

64. The method according to claim 63, for use with an origin server storing the second content item, or the part thereof, the method further comprising the steps of:

in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, not being stored in the server device;

obtaining, from the origin server, the second content item, or the part thereof; and

streaming, to the second client device, the obtained second content item, or the part thereof.

65. The method according to claim 63, for use with an origin server storing the second content item, or the part thereof, the method further comprising the steps of:

receiving, from a second client device, an indicator;

in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, not being stored in the server device, and in response to the received indicator;

obtaining, from the origin server, the second content item, or the part thereof;

storing, in the server device memory, the received second content item, or the part thereof; and

streaming, to the second client device, the obtained second content item, or the part thereof.

66. The method according to claim 65, wherein the indicator is associated with first and second values, and wherein the steps of obtaining and streaming are performed only upon received indicator having the first value.

67. The method according to claim 65, wherein in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, not being stored in the server device, and in response to the received indicator, the obtaining step is preceded by the step of evicting one or more content items, or one or more parts thereof, from the memory.

68. The method according to claim 67, wherein the evicting is an eviction scheme that is based on, or using, Beladys algorithm, Least Recently Used (LRU), Most Recently Used (MRU), Pseudo-LRU (PLRU), Random Replacement (RR), Least Frequently Used (LFU), First-In-First-Out (FIFO), or any combination thereof.

69. The method according to claim 65, wherein in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, not being stored in the server device, and in response to the received indicator, the obtaining step is preceded by the step of evicting one or more second parts of the part of the multiple content items from the memory.

70. The method according to claim 65, for use with a database stored in the server device, the method further comprising the steps of:

in response to the second content item, or the part thereof, not being stored in the server device, and in response to the received indicator;

storing, in a record in the database, the second content item identifier, an identifier of the second client device, the time of receiving the second request, or any combination thereof.

71. The method according to claim 70, wherein the indicator is associated with first and second values, and wherein the step of storing in the database is performed only upon received indicator having the second value.

72. The method according to claim 70, the method further comprising the step of fetching, from the database, one or more records associated with the second content item identifier.

73. The method according to claim 72, the method further comprising the steps sending, to the second client device, identifiers of client devices or time of receiving requests included in the fetched records.

74. The method according to claim 72, for use with a time period, wherein only records associated with time of receiving requests in the time period are fetched.

75. The method according to claim 74, wherein the time period is less than 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, or 500 seconds, 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, or 500 minutes, 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, or 500 hours, 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, or 500 days, or 1, 5, 10, 50, or 100 weeks before the time of receiving the second request.

76. The method according to claim 74, for use with a minimum threshold, further comprising the step of comparing the number of fetched records to the minimum threshold.

77. The method according to claim 76, further comprising the step of in response to the number of fetched records being above the minimum threshold:

obtaining, from the origin server, the second content item, or the part thereof;

storing, in the server device memory, the received second content item, or the part thereof; and

streaming, to the second client device, the obtained second content item, or the part thereof.

78. The method according to claim 76, further comprising the step of in response to the number of fetched records being above the minimum threshold, deleting the fetched records from the database.

79. The method according to claim 49, wherein the server is a replica server in a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

80. The method according to claim 49, wherein the server is a web server.

81. The method according to claim 49, wherein the streaming is based on, compatible with, using, or according to, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

82. The method according to claim 49, wherein the streaming is based on, using, or according to, progressive download.

83. The method according to claim 49, wherein the streaming is based on, using, or according to, adaptive bit-rate streaming.

84. The method according to claim 83, wherein the streaming is based on, using, compatible with, or according to, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), or HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS).

85. The method according to claim 49, further comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium containing computer instructions that, when executed or interpreted by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps.

86. The method according to claim 85, wherein the computer instructions are using a programming language.

87. The method according to claim 86, wherein the programming language is an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) language that supports scripting.

88. The method according to claim 87, wherein the programming language is based on, or according to, C, C++, Objective-C, Perl, REXX, VBScript, JavaScript, or Java.

89. The method according to claim 49, further comprising storing, operating, or using, a server operating system.

90. The method according to claim 89, wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, or is based on, one out of Microsoft Windows Server®

, Linux, or UNIX.

91. The method according to claim 90, wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, or is based on, one out of Microsoft Windows Server®

2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 variant, Linux™

or GNU/Linux-based Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/Hurd, Fedora™

, Gentoo™

, Linspire™

, Mandriva, Red Hat®

Linux, SuSE, and Ubuntu®

, UNIX®

variant Solaris™

, AIX®

, Mac™

OS X, FreeBSD®

, OpenBSD, and NetBSD®

.

92. The method according to claim 49, wherein each of all of the identifiers is an IP address or a URL.

93. The method according to claim 92, wherein the IP address is in IPv4 or IPv6 form.

94. The method according to claim 49, wherein the server is a web server using HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that responds to HTTP requests via the Internet, and, wherein the request is an HTTP request.

95. The method according to claim 94, wherein the communication with the client device is based on, or using an HTTP persistent connection.

96. The method according to claim 94, wherein the communication with the client device is based on, or using, a TCP/IP protocol or connection.

97. The method according to claim 49, wherein the request is based on, compatible with, or are according to, byte or range serving.

98. The method according to claim 97, wherein the byte or range serving is based on, is compatible with, or using, the HTTP/1.1 range request scheme that is based on, is compatible with, or is according to, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 2616 or RFC 7233.

99. The method according to claim 49, wherein each of the multiple content items comprises a compressed media data according to a compression scheme.

100. The method according to claim 99, wherein the compression scheme uses lossy or lossless compression.

101. The method according to claim 99, wherein the compression scheme uses intraframe or interframe compression.

102. The method according to claim 99, wherein the compression scheme uses a standard compression scheme that is based on, is compatible with, or according to, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), ITU-T H.261, ITU-T H.263, ITU-T H.264, or ITU-T CCIR 601.

103. The method according to claim 49, wherein the streaming media data includes digital multimedia, digital audio, or digital video data.

104. The method according to claim 103, wherein the digital video is in a format that is based on, is compatible with, or is according to, TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), RAW, AVI, DV, DV-PAL, HDV, MOV, WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DCF (Design Rule for Camera Format), ITU-T H.261, ITU-T H.263, ITU-T H.264, ITU-T CCIR 601, ASF, Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format), or DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) standard.

105. The method according to claim 103, wherein the digital video data is in a High-Definition (HD) or Standard-Definition (SD) format.

106. The method according to claim 103, wherein the digital video data is based on, is compatible with, or according to, ISO/IEC 14496 standard, MPEG-4 standard, or ITU-T H.264 standard.

107. The method according to claim 103, wherein the digital video data includes or is part of, a movie.