System and method for efficient delivery of repetitive multimedia content

Abstract

A system and method for off-loading the serving of repetitive content by a streaming server are presented. The method includes establishing a plurality of unicast transport-layer sockets with a plurality of end-user devices; receiving a plurality of requests for a multimedia content from the plurality of end-user devices, wherein the plurality of requests are session-layer requests; determining if the received plurality of requests are for a repetitive content; and upon determination that the received plurality of requests are for the repetitive content: opening a single socket with a streaming application of at least one streaming server; retrieving a single copy of the requested multimedia content from the streaming application over the single socket; and streaming the retrieved single copy to the plurality of end-user devices through their respective plurality of unicast transport-layer sockets.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.