Dynamic tag management for optimizing content delivery

• US 9,424,363 B2
• Filed: 03/04/2015
• Issued: 08/23/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Edgio Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Verizon Digital Media Services Inc. (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Inventors: Kazerani, Alexander A., Peters, Robert J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hussain, Tauqir
• Application Number:
  US14/638,622
• Publication Number:
  US 20150178299A1
• Time in Patent Office: 538 Days
• Field of Search: 709/213
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/69 using geographic information, e.g. room number
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/048 mobile agents
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0858 One way delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/00 Network arrangements, protocols or services for addressing or naming
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/58 Caching of addresses or names
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/762 at the source reformatting of additional data in video distribution servers H04N21/2355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/565 Conversion or adaptation of application format or content adding application control or application functional data H04L67/561
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/567 Integrating service provisioning from a plurality of service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5681 Pre-fetching or pre-delivering data based on network characteristics
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/60 : Scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests, e.g. requests for application data transmissions using the analysis and optimisation of the required network resources admission control or resource allocation H04L47/70
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 : for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a content delivery network (CDN) solution that affords the CDN control over those elements of customer content that are delivered by third parties. The CDN integrates a distributed set of monitoring agents. Each monitoring agent monitors the delivery performance of third parties to the region in which the agent operates. The CDN uses the performance monitoring information to dynamically manage the content tags to the third-party delivered elements of CDN-customer content. Specifically, a CDN server retrieves the parent page for requested CDN-customer content. The CDN server identifies the region from where the request originates and retrieves the logs from the monitoring agents monitoring from that region. The CDN server then modifies the base page by dynamically removing the tags to the third-party delivered elements that are reported in the monitoring agent logs as being unavailable, inaccessible, or underperforming in the identified region.

Claims

1. A method performed for optimizing delivery of a customer page accessible at a first domain, the customer page comprising a first tag linking to first content provided from a different second domain, the method comprising:

receiving a request for said customer page at a machine operating within the first domain, the request comprising an address of a user submitting the request;

mapping said address to a geographic region;

retrieving monitoring results measuring delivery performance from the second domain to said geographic region;

producing a modified customer page by removing the first tag when the delivery performance from the second domain to said geographic region does not satisfy a threshold; and

passing the modified customer page without the first tag to the user in response to said request.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising passing the customer page with the first tag to the user in response to said request when the delivery performance from the second domain to said geographic region satisfies said threshold.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the customer page further comprises a second tag linking to second content that is cached by said machine.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein passing the modified customer page comprises passing the second content contemporaneous with passing of the modified customer page.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving a second request for the customer page from a second user identified by a different second address and retrieving monitoring results measuring delivery performance from the second domain to a different second geographic region associated with the different second address of the second user.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising passing the customer page with the first tag to the second user in response to said second request when the delivery performance from the second domain to said second geographic region satisfies said threshold.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein producing the modified customer page comprises replacing the first tag linking to the first content with a different second tag linking to second content provided from a different third domain, wherein delivery performance of the third content from the third domain to said geographic region satisfies said threshold.

8. A method for optimizing content delivery, the method comprising:

hosting a customer page comprising a plurality of tags linking to a plurality of content delivered by different third parties;

identifying at least one tag from the plurality of tags defined in said customer page as a blocking tag, wherein the blocking tag prevents content linked to the blocking tag from being downloaded in parallel with content linked to other tags;

producing a modified customer page by rewriting the at least one blocking tag as a nonblocking tag, wherein the nonblocking tag permits content linked to the nonblocking tag to be downloaded in parallel with content linked to other nonblocking tags; and

passing the modified customer page with the blocking tag rewritten as a nonblocking tag to a user in response to a request for the customer page from the user.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the rewriting the blocking tag as a nonblocking tag comprises inserting the async attribute in the blocking tag definition.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising identifying a geographic region in which the user operates from a user address included as part of the request.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising retrieving monitoring results measuring delivery performance from each of the third parties to said geographic region.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein producing the modified customer page comprises removing a particular tag from the plurality of tags when the delivery performance from a third party delivering content linked to the particular tag is below a threshold.

13. A method for optimizing content delivery from a content delivery network (CDN), the method comprising:

hosting a customer page at any one or more machines operated by the CDN, the customer page comprising at least a first link to first content delivered by a first third party operating independent of the CDN and a second link to second content delivered by a second third party operating independent of the CDN;

monitoring content delivery performance provided by the first and second third parties to at least a first geographic region and a different second geographic region;

producing a first modified customer page for optimized delivery of the customer page to the first geographic region by removing the first link and by retaining the second link when said content delivery performance provided by the first third party to the first geographic region does not satisfy a threshold and said content delivery performance provided by the second third party to the first geographic region satisfies the threshold;

producing a second modified customer page for optimized delivery of the customer page to the second geographic region by removing the second link and by retaining the first link when said content delivery performance provided by the second third party to the second geographic region does not satisfy the threshold and said content delivery performance provided by the first third party to the second geographic region satisfies the threshold; and

passing the first modified customer page in response to a user request originating from the first geographic region, the second modified customer page in response to a user request originating from the second geographic region, and the customer page unmodified in response to a user request originating from a third geographic region.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein monitoring the content delivery performance comprises requesting an object from each of the first and second third parties from within the first geographic region and separately from within the second geographic region, and tracking performance of each of the first and second third parties to each geographic region.

15. The method of claim 13 further comprising hosting a second customer page comprising a third link to third content delivered by the first third party and a fourth link to fourth content delivered by the second third party operating independent of the CDN.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising producing a first modified second customer page for optimized delivery to the first geographic region based on said monitoring of the content delivery performance, wherein producing the first modified second customer page comprises removing the third link and retaining the fourth link.

17. The method of claim 13 further comprising assigning a time-to-live (TTL) parameter to each of the first and second modified customer pages.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein passing the first modified customer page occurs when the first modified customer page TTL parameter has not expired, and wherein passing the second modified customer page occurs when the second modified customer page TTL parameter has not expired.

19. The method of claim 18 further comprising validating the first modified customer page at expiration of the first modified customer page TTL parameter, wherein validating the first modified customer page comprises measuring anew the content delivery performance provided by the first third party to the first geographic region, retaining the first modified customer page when remeasured content delivery performance provided by the first third party to the first geographic region does not satisfy the threshold, and purging the first modified customer page when remeasured content delivery performance provided by the second third party to the first geographic region satisfies the threshold.

20. The method of claim 17 further comprising purging the first and second modified customer page at the expiration of the TTL parameter.