Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC

Level 3 Communications, LLC

Jeremy Spencer

James Panagos

Jason Forbes

Qing Li

Jin-Gen Wang

Ron Munoz

James Panago

Apparatus and methods for delivery of content in a packetized network. In one embodiment, content and/or services can be associated with an IP address. The IP address may be assigned to multiple server devices disposed at geographically diverse locations. Delivery caches may advertise, via a routing protocol, one or more addresses to clients of the network. Route selection may be configured based on one or more rules such as geographical proximity, available bandwidth, server availability, server load, delivery cost, client subscription level, licensing rules, and/or other metric. Delivery caches may be configured to control their availability and/or load through IP address withdrawals and announcements. When the 'closest' delivery cache may become unavailable (e.g., it is not announcing the IP address for the content the client is trying to obtain, a route to the next 'closest' available delivery cache may be utilized.

Packetized content delivery apparatus and methods

Apparatus and methods for managing content delivery in a packetized network. The network provide content to a plurality of clients via a plurality of nodes. A security threat associated with one of the nodes is detected and in response the host uses border gateway protocol to communicate non-forwarding table information informing one or more nodes of the network of the threat. In another variant, communication allows the nodes to take local action to protect themselves. This same local action occurs on the host, allowing it to continue serving content. The host utilizes BGP to dynamically inform nodes of changes in the network traffic delivery rules, such as causing traffic to different clients having different levels of reliability and/or provided on a best-effort basis. The BGP may be utilized to add/remove routes or nodes and to identify and respond to potentially malicious activities, changes in network configuration, and/or delivery requirements.

An embodiment of a method includes receiving a request for the content from a requester, retrieving the content from a media access server, and while retrieving the content from the media access server, simultaneously streaming the content to the requester. An embodiment of a system includes an edge server having a media streaming server configured to receive the request and stream the specified content to a requester from a local memory, and a stream caching server configured to retrieve the requested content from a media access server while the media streaming server is streaming at least a specified portion of the content, and wherein the stream caching server is further configured to store the retrieved content in a local cache and notify the media streaming server that content is stored in local cache.

Growing community of inventors

Lafayette, CO, United States of America

Jeremy Spencer