USING LISTEN RANGES TO DELIVER CONTENT TO ELECTRONIC DEVICES FROM LOCAL CACHING SERVERS

• US 20150350342A1
• Filed: 12/30/2014
• Published: 12/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Thorpe, Jason R., Abbott, Michael J., Vaughan, Gregory B., Burns, Gregory, Yanagihara, Kazuhisa
• Granted Patent: US 10,033,818 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/12 Discovery or management of network topologies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1073 Registration or de-registration
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching

Abstract

In the described embodiments, local caching servers (LCSs) are configured to cache content so that the content can be acquired by client electronic devices that are located on local area networks (LANs) with the LCSs. In some embodiments, to enable the acquisition of the cached content, a client electronic device sends, to a registration server, a request for identifiers for LCSs that are located on a LAN with the client electronic device. The request includes one or more “listen ranges,” each of which includes an indication of client electronic devices for which a corresponding LCS is to provide content. The registration server uses the listen ranges to select one or more LCSs, and returns identifiers for the one or more LCSs to the client electronic device. Using the one or more identifiers, the client electronic device acquires the content from an LCS via the LAN.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

by a registration server, performing operations for;

receiving a request to discover locally available local caching servers from a client electronic device;

based on one or more server listen ranges, selecting one or more local caching servers from which the client electronic device is permitted to acquire content, wherein each server listen range comprises one or more network addresses; and

sending a response to the client electronic device that comprises identifiers for the one or more local caching servers, the identifiers configured to be usable by the client electronic device to acquire the content from the one or more local caching servers.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, based on the one or more server listen ranges, selecting the one or more local caching servers comprises:

by the registration server, performing operations for;

acquiring, from the request to discover locally available local caching servers, at least one network address for the client electronic device and one or more client listen ranges, wherein each client listen range comprises one or more network addresses;

based on the at least one network address, determining client listen ranges in which the client electronic device is presently included;

comparing the determined client listen ranges to the one or more server listen ranges to identify server listen ranges that include the determined client listen ranges; and

selecting local caching servers corresponding to the identified server listen ranges.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

by the registration server, performing operations for;

using one or more filter values, filtering the identified server listen ranges to remove corresponding identified server listen ranges;

wherein selecting local caching servers corresponding to the identified server listen ranges comprises not selecting local caching servers corresponding to the removed identified server listen ranges.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

by the registration server, performing operations for;

when there are two or more identified server listen ranges, based on one or more criteria, choosing a single one of the two or more identified server listen ranges;

wherein selecting local caching servers corresponding to the identified server listen ranges comprises selecting a single local caching server corresponding to the chosen single one of the two or more identified server listen ranges.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

by the registration server, performing operations for;

selecting one or more of the identified server listen ranges for which corresponding local caching servers have one or more characteristics with specified relationships to corresponding characteristic values;

wherein selecting local caching servers corresponding to the identified server listen ranges comprises selecting local caching servers corresponding to the selected identified server listen ranges.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

by the registration server, performing operations for;

from each of the one or more local caching servers,

receiving an identification of one or more server listen ranges for the local caching server.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more local caching servers are located on a same local area network (LAN) as the client electronic device.

8. A method, comprising:

by a client electronic device, performing operations for;

sending, to a registration server, a request to discover local caching servers that are configured to provide content to the client electronic device via a LAN, the request comprising one or more client listen ranges;

receiving, in response to the request, a response from the registration server, the response comprising one or more identifiers for local caching servers that were selected based on the one or more client listen ranges; and

acquiring content from a local caching server based on the one or more identifiers.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

upon determining that the content cannot be acquired from local caching servers based on the one or more identifiers, performing one or more operations to acquire the content from a content distribution network.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

receiving each of the one or more client listen ranges, each client listen range including identifiers for client electronic devices for which a corresponding local caching server is configured to provide content via a corresponding LAN.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein receiving the one or more client listen ranges comprises:

requesting via the LAN from a domain name system (DNS) server, client listen ranges; and

receiving a response from the DNS server that comprises the client listen ranges.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein acquiring content from a local caching server based on the one or more identifiers comprises:

selecting one or more local caching servers based on the one or more identifiers and one or more criteria.

13. A method, comprising:

by a local caching server, performing operations for;

registering with a registration server, the registering comprising reporting one or more server listen ranges for the local caching server to the registration server, each server listen range comprising indications of client electronic devices for which the local caching server is configured to provide cached content via a corresponding LAN;

receiving a request from a client electronic device to acquire content from the local caching server; and

when the content is cached in the local caching server, providing the content to the client electronic device via the corresponding LAN.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

when the content is not cached in the local caching server, by the local caching server, performing operations for;

when another available local caching server has a cached copy of the content, acquiring the content from the other local caching server,

otherwise, acquiring the content from a content distribution network;

caching the acquired content; and

providing the acquired content to the client electronic device via the corresponding LAN.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

when the content is not cached in the local caching server, by the local caching server, performing operations for;

sending a rejection message to the client electronic device.

16. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

by the local caching server, performing operations for;

receiving each of the one or more server listen ranges, each server listen range including identifiers for client electronic devices for which the local caching server is configured to provide content via the LAN.