Control in a content delivery network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11838385-B2
Application number	US-202117559071-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 22, 2021
Priority date	Dec 14, 2011
Publication date	Dec 5, 2023
Grant date	Dec 5, 2023

Abstract

A content delivery network (CDN) includes a plurality of CDN components including at least one CDN rendezvous mechanism and at least one control core. The CDN components are controlled by control core data from the at least one control core. Some CDN components obtain CDN resources including control core data from at least some other CDN components. The CDN components use the CDN rendezvous mechanism to select one or more CDN components from which to obtain CDN resources.

First claim

We claim:

1. A content delivery network (CDN) comprising:
a plurality of CDN components including at least one CDN rendezvous mechanism and at least one control core,
wherein the plurality of CDN components are controlled by control core data from the at least one control core,
wherein at least some particular CDN components are constructed and adapted to obtain CDN resources from at least some other CDN components,
wherein the CDN components use the CDN rendezvous mechanism to select one or more CDN components from which to obtain CDN resources
wherein the CDN has a current CDN configuration,
wherein the at least one control core keeps an authoritative database of the current CDN configuration, and
wherein the control core uses voting to maintain consistency of the authoritative database.

2. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the at least one CDN rendezvous mechanism rendezvous a particular CDN component of the plurality of CDN components to a control core machine that is best or optimal for that particular CDN component.

3. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein at least some particular CDN components are controlled by control core data from the at least one control core.

4. The CDN of claim 3 , wherein the control core data comprises resources distributed by the control core.

5. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of CDN components comprise:
a plurality of cache servers, each constructed and adapted to deliver resources associated with at least one customer of the CDN.

6. The CDN of claim 5 , wherein said cache servers are customers of the CDN.

7. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of CDN components are controlled by control core data from the at least one control core.

8. The CDN of claim 7 , wherein the control core data comprises resources provided by the control core in response to requests from internal CDN components.

9. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the at least one control core comprises a distributed control core.

10. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the control core comprises a distributed system comprising a plurality of machines.

11. The CDN of claim 10 , wherein the control core uses a distributed consensus algorithm to achieve consensus among the plurality of machines.

12. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of CDN components access at least one control core via one or more control core domain names.

13. The CDN of claim 12 , wherein the plurality of CDN components use the at least one CDN rendezvous mechanism to resolve the one or more control core domain names.

14. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein said control core data comprises control obj ects.

15. The CDN of claim 14 , wherein the CDN comprises one or more tiers of CDN components, organized hierarchically and wherein the at least one control core comprises an origin tier for said control objects.

16. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein a particular CDN component of said plurality of CDN components obtains CDN data using the CDN.

17. The CDN of claim 1 , wherein at least some CDN components of said plurality of CDN components obtain CDN control core data using the CDN.

Assignees

• Level 3 Communications Llc

Inventors

• Lipstone Laurence R
• Crowder William
• Koller Jeffrey G
• Fullagar David
• Yevmenkin Maksim
• Newton Christopher

Classifications

• H04L67/60 Primary

  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 title

• H04L67/5682 Primary

  Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data · CPC title

• H04L41/0856

  by backing up or archiving configuration information · CPC title

• H04L41/0893

  Assignment of logical groups to network elements · CPC title

• H04L41/509

  wherein the managed service relates to media content delivery, e.g. audio, video or TV · CPC title