US 12,701,302 B2 · Multicast assisted delivery

Abstract

Described is a method of delivering content over network using an approach referred to here as “Multicast Assisted Unicast Delivery” (MAUD), as a multicast network is used to assist, rather than substituting for, an otherwise unicast path. Content is requested by client devices from a content server over unicast. These unicast requests are sent via a first and a second proxy, before being sent by the second proxy to the content server, all over unicast. The responses containing the requested content is sent back to the second proxy over unicast from the content server. The second proxy processes the received unicast responses and sends the responses over a multicast stream to the first proxy. The first proxy processes the received responses and sends them onto the requesting client devices over unicast.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method of delivering content to a client device in a network comprising a plurality of client devices, said method comprising:

i) receiving at a first network node a request for content from one of the client devices over unicast, and sending that request to a second network node over unicast;
ii) receiving the request for content at the second network node from the first network node, and then sending a corresponding request onto a content server over unicast;
iii) receiving the content that has been requested by the request for content at the second network node from the content server over unicast, and in response sending the content that has been received by the second network node to the first network node over multicast;
and
iv) receiving the content from the second network node at the first network node, and sending the content to the client device, that sent the request for content received at the first network node, over unicast.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Multicast assisted delivery

Life of this patent

Multicast assisted delivery

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20