Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Michael G Merideth

Andrew F Champagne

Matthew J Stevens

Mark A Roman

Brendan Coyle

Xin Xu

Nil Alexandrov

Timothy Glynn

Philip A Lisiecki

Robert Bird

Aniruddha Bohra

Vinay Kanitkar

This patent document describes technology for providing real-time messaging and entity update services in a distributed proxy server network, such as a CDN. Uses include distributing real-time notifications about updates to data stored in and delivered by the network, with both high efficiency and locality of latency. The technology can be integrated into conventional caching proxy servers providing HTTP services, thereby leveraging their existing footprint in the Internet, their existing overlay network topologies and architectures, and their integration with existing traffic management components.

Real-time message delivery and update service in a proxy server network

Edge server compute capacity demand in an overlay network is predicted and used to pre-position compute capacity in advance of application-specific demands. Preferably, machine learning is used to proactively predict anticipated compute capacity needs for an edge server region (e.g., a set of co-located edge servers). In advance, compute capacity (application instances) are made available in-region, and data associated with an application instance is migrated to be close to the instance. The approach facilitates compute-at-the-edge services, which require data (state) to be close to a pre-positioned latency-sensitive application instance. Overlay network mapping (globally) may be used for more long-term positioning, with short-duration scheduling then being done in-region as needed. Compute instances and associated state are migrated intelligently based on predicted (e.g., machine-learned) demand, and with full data consistency enforced.

Intelligently pre-positioning and migrating compute capacity in an overlay network, with compute handoff and data consistency

A proxy server is augmented with the capability of taking transient possession of a received entity for purposes of serving consuming devices. This capability supplements destination forwarding and/or origin server transactions performed by the proxy server. This capability enables several entity transfer modes, including a rendezvous service, in which the proxy server can (if invoked by a client) fulfill a client's request with an entity that the proxy server receives from a producing device contemporaneous with (or shortly after) the request for that entity. It also enables server-to-server transfers with synchronous or asynchronous destination forwarding behavior. It also enables a mode in which clients can request different representations of entities, e.g., from either the near-channel (e.g., the version stored at the proxy server) or a far-channel (e.g., at origin server). The teachings hereof are compatible with, although not limited to, conventional HTTP messaging protocols, including GET, POST and PUT methods.

Proxy server entity transfer modes

Growing community of inventors

Carrboro, NC, United States of America

Michael G Merideth