Cisco Technology, Inc.

Neeraj Kumar Sharma

Hoi-tauw Jozef Chou

Daniel Michael Kiewlich

Robert Drew Major

Glenn William Connery

W Paul Sherer

Howard Rollin Davis

Kirk Blattman

Mel J Oyler

Khalid Mohammed Azam

Mel Oyer

Gary Ward Richardson

A virtual content store may be provided. Upon receiving a request for a content stream from a subscriber at a regional headend, a central content vault may be examined to determine whether the content stream is available. Once the content stream is determined to be available in the central content vault, a streaming session may be established to the subscriber from the regional headend. The content stream may be retrieved from the central content vault and provided to the subscriber via the streaming session.

Virtual content store in interactive services architecture

A technique for managing the streaming of digital video content to multiple clients involves identifying an attribute of a content element that is streamed to a client and selecting a protection mechanism for the content element as a function of the attribute, wherein the protection mechanism enables streaming of the content element to the clients in the event of a resource failure. In an example, the identified attribute is an indication of the popularity of the content element (e.g., as measured by the number of active streams), such that the protection mechanism is selected as a function of the popularity of the content element. In an embodiment, protection mechanisms that offer a higher level of protection are selected for the more popular content elements and protection mechanisms that offer a lower level of protection are selected for the less popular content elements.

Stream control failover utilizing an attribute-dependent protection mechanism

A technique for streaming digital video content to multiple clients involves establishing a logical group of IP-connected stream servers, generating state information at multiple stream servers within the logical group, sharing the state information amongst stream servers in the logical group, and using the shared state information to respond to resource failures within the logical group. By sharing state information within the logical group of stream servers, stream servers with the shared state information can quickly take over the active streams from a failed stream server within the logical group. The quick transition of responsibility from one stream server to another enables the streaming network to provide continuous streaming of digital video content to the viewer without interruption.

Stream control failover utilizing the sharing of state information within a logical group of stream servers

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Neeraj Kumar Sharma