International Business Machines Corporation

Srikanth Ramamurthy

Thirumale Niranjan

Rajesh S Agarwalla

Sumanthkumar Sukumar

Ronald Patrick Doyle

Yi Zhou

Marcia L Stockton

Bryan Eric Aupperle

Steven M Berman

Tianyu Jiang

An intermediate content transcoder. An intermediate content transcoder can include a communicative receiver configured to receive master content while in transit from a content source to at least one content sink in a content distribution network, and a communicative transmitter configured to transmit transcoded content to one or more of the content sinks. A set of content transformations also can be provided. Furthermore, the intermediate content transcoder can include a set of conditions for selecting individual ones of the content transformations to be applied to master content received through the communicative receiver. Finally, the intermediate content transcoder can include a transcoder configured to apply the selected individual ones of the content transformations to the master content. The application of the content transformations can produce transcoded content. The communicative transmitter, in turn, can forward the produced transcoded content to one or more of the content sinks.

Content transcoding in a content distribution network

A method, apparatus, and computer implemented instructions for managing data in a network data processing system. A packet containing data associated with content is received. A determination is made as to whether the packet is enabled for content distribution by examining the data packet. Responsive to the packet being enabled for content distribution, the content is distributed in response to a request for the content without requiring a validity check. If the packet is not enabled for content distribution, a validity check is performed on the content using control information contained within the header of the data packet.

Method and apparatus for caching subscribed and non-subscribed content in a network data processing system

Techniques are disclosed for addressing the name space mismatch between content caching systems (which use Uniform Resource Locators, or 'URLs') and content servers (which use file and path names). A file name-to-URL mapping is created for use by content caching systems, and data in protocol response messages (and optionally in protocol request messages) is augmented to transmit information for use in creating this mapping, enabling a content caching system to automatically and dynamically populate its file name-to-URL mapping. By having the file name available, the caching system can now respond to content management messages which identify the cached content by only the content's associated file name. Techniques for encoding the message extensions include: use of new directives on existing cache-control headers in Hypertext Transfer Protocol ('HTTP') messages; addition of new headers in HTTP messages; and use of meta-data in markup languages such as Hypertext Markup Language (&#x201c;HTML&#x201d;) or Extensible Markup Language (&#x201c;XML&#x201d;) format.

Addressing the name space mismatch between content servers and content caching systems

A method, apparatus and computer implemented instructions for minimizing inconsistency between a set of data sources in a data processing system. A first signal is sent indicating that new content is present for the set of data sources. The new content is transmitted to the set of data sources in which the new content is unavailable for distribution by the set of data sources until a second signal is received by the set of data sources. The second signal is sent to the set of data sources if an acknowledgment is received from all of the sets of data sources.

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Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Srikanth Ramamurthy