Content delivery network

• US 8,868,737 B2
• Filed: 06/11/2012
• Issued: 10/21/2014
• 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.
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Hitesh
• Application Number:
  US13/493,859
• Publication Number:
  US 20120254421A1
• Time in Patent Office: 862 Days
• Field of Search: 709223-226, 709/235, 370/229, 370/254
• US Class Current: 709/224
• 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 delivery reports in a content delivery network, the system comprising:

a delivery server in a content delivery network, the delivery server configured to host media files on behalf of a plurality of content providers and to deliver the media files to end users of the content delivery network, the delivery server comprising computer hardware configured to;

log media delivery events in response to the media files being delivered to the end users of the content delivery network, each of the media delivery events comprising media delivery event data representing an amount of data of the media files delivered to the end users;

generate an event report that summarizes the media delivery event data for multiple deliveries of the media files by at least summing values of the media delivery event data for each of the media files to obtain a cumulative amount of the delivered data; and

provide the event report with the summarized media delivery event data over the content delivery network instead of transmitting a separate message for each of the media delivery events over the content delivery network;

wherein as network traffic increases in the content delivery network, a volume of the summarized media event delivery data increases at a slower rate than a rate of increase in the network traffic.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the delivery servers is further configured to persistently store the media event delivery data on the delivery server.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein said storing is performed in response to determining that a network connection cannot be established.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the delivery server is further configured to provide the event report in response to one or more usage-based triggering actions.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the one or more usage-based triggering actions comprises one or more of the following:

determining that a threshold amount of the media delivery event data has accumulated;

determining that a threshold amount of traffic has accumulated per each media file delivered;

or

determining that a threshold financial value associated with the media delivery event data has accumulated.

6. A non-transitory computer storage comprising instructions stored that, when executed in one or more processors, implement operations for providing media delivery reports in a content delivery network, the operations comprising:

logging media delivery events in response to media files being delivered to end users of a content delivery network, each of the media delivery events comprising media delivery event data representing an amount of data of the media files delivered to the end users, the media files being hosted in the content delivery network on behalf of a content provider;

generating an event report that summarizes the media delivery event data for multiple deliveries of the media files by at least summing values of the media delivery event data for each of the media files to obtain a cumulative amount of the delivered data; and

providing the event report with the summarized media delivery event data over the content delivery network instead of transmitting a separate message for each of the media delivery events over the content delivery network;

wherein as network traffic increases in the content delivery network, a volume of the summarized media event delivery data increases at a slower rate than a rate of increase in the network traffic.

7. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 6, wherein the delivery data comprises data for a plurality of delivery attributes.

8. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 7, wherein the delivery attributes comprise a number of requests for a content item.

9. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 7, wherein the delivery attributes comprise a delivery amount attribute reflecting an amount of a content item that was successfully delivered.

10. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 6, wherein said providing the event report is performed in response to one or more usage-based triggering actions.

11. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 10, wherein the one or more usage-based triggering actions comprises one or more of the following:

determining that a threshold amount of the media delivery event data has accumulated;

determining that a threshold amount of traffic has accumulated per each media file delivered;

or

determining that a threshold financial value associated with the media delivery event data has accumulated.

12. A method of providing media delivery reports in a content delivery network, the method comprising:

receiving, at a billing server comprising one or more processors, first delivery data corresponding to first media file deliveries performed by one or more first delivery servers in a content delivery network, the first delivery data comprising information representing a first amount of data of the media files delivered to end users by the one or more first delivery servers, the first delivery data being summarized to reflect cumulative first amounts of the delivered data of the media files rather than individual log entries representing amounts of data delivered in individual deliveries of the media files;

receiving, at the billing server, second delivery data corresponding to second media file deliveries performed by one or more second delivery servers in the content delivery network, values of the second delivery data being summarized to reflect cumulative second amounts of delivered data;

combining, using the one or more processors of the billing server, the first and second delivery data to produce summarized delivery data; and

outputting a billing user interface for presentation to a content provider of the media files, the billing user interface comprising the summarized delivery data;

wherein as network traffic increases in the content delivery network, a volume of the first and second delivery data increases at a slower rate than a rate of increase in the network traffic.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the billing server is further configured to calculate a delivery completion percentage based on the summarized delivery data.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein said receiving the first delivery data comprises receiving the first delivery data from a first usage server and wherein said receiving the second delivery data comprises receiving the second delivery data from a second usage server.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the first and second usage servers are configured to receive the first delivery data from a plurality of delivery servers.