Kontiki, Inc.

Object Technology Licensing Corporation

Wade L Hennessey

John B Wainwright

John B Wainright

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates optimizing content delivery on a network. During operation, the system receives an item of content at a first client. During the download of the content or after downloading the content, the first client receives a broadcast request for the content from a second client on the same local subnet. Upon receiving the broadcast request, the first client sends a broadcast response to the local subnet, wherein the broadcast response identifies a multicast address to which the first client will deliver the content. The first client then delivers the content to the multicast address so that the second client and any other interested clients on the local subnet can receive the content.

Method and apparatus for optimizing content delivery on local subnets

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates receiving content from a primary peer and forwarding it to a secondary peer, wherein blocks of the content are sent to the secondary peer prior to all of the blocks of the content being received from the primary peer. The system starts by receiving an encrypted list of checksums from a server, wherein each checksum in the list is associated with a corresponding block of the content. Next, the system decrypts the encrypted list of checksums to form a list of decrypted checksums. The system then receives a block of the content from the primary peer and calculates a checksum for the block of the content. The system subsequently compares the calculated checksum with a corresponding checksum from the list of decrypted checksums received from the server. If the calculated checksum matches the corresponding checksum, the system sends the block of the content to the secondary peer.

Method and apparatus for facilitating secure distributed content delivery

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates determining the network topology in a peer-to-peer network. The system operates by performing a tracerouting operation to obtain a traceroute from a first client to a directory server, wherein a traceroute describes a path through which a packet travels between the first client and the directory server, including addresses of the routers through which the packet travels. Next, the system sends the traceroute to the directory server from the first client. The directory server then uses the traceroute to build a router graph that represents the topology of the peer-to-peer network.

Method and apparatus for determining network topology in a peer-to-peer network

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates receiving content at a client from one or more servers that can potentially provide the content. The client starts by sending a request for the content to a directory server. In response to the request, the client receives a list of candidate servers that can potentially provide the content from the directory server. Once the client has received the list of candidate servers, the client sends a request to one or more of the candidate servers for the content, and subsequently receives the content from one or more of the candidate servers.

Method and apparatus for facilitating distributed delivery of content across a computer network

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates dynamically configuring communication parameters for an application on a network node. During operation, the system monitors activities on the network node that are external to the application. If the level of the activities exceeds a specified threshold, the system adjusts the communications parameters for the application, so that activities external to the application on the network node are not adversely affected by communication activities of the application.

Dynamically configuring network communication parameters for an application

The present invention provides a novel method and apparatus for performing real-time computer garbage collection, in a manner that offers unprecedented low bounds on the worst-case frequency and duration of the collection task. The invention is used with a plurality of data objects and with one or more mutator programs. The mutators and a garbage collector run on one or more processors. The mutators each have a corresponding thread with a corresponding thread state. In the present invention, execution of all mutators is temporarily restricted at the start of each new garbage collection cycle. However, unrestricted execution of a mutator is quickly resumed, as soon as that mutator's thread state is processed. The remainder of the garbage collection cycle may be performed concurrently with the mutators. In another feature of the present invention yielding important performance benefits, the mutators are executed subject to a protective write barrier, but the write barrier does not have to be applied to the modification of mutator thread states.

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Wade L Hennessey