Contact-on-demand method and network therefor

Abstract

A method is provided of providing a content-on-demand service to a user terminal in a system comprising a plurality of content-on-demand servers and a packet-switched network. The method comprises the steps of: a first of the content-on-demand servers seeking to reserve packet-switched network resources to enable service delivery to the user terminal, said first server sending a message that resource reservation was insufficient, a further of the content-on-demand servers seeking to reserve packet-switched network resources to enable service provision to the user terminal, said further server sending a message that resource reservation is sufficient, and said further server providing the content to the user terminal via the packet-switched network.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.