US 9,438,444 B1 · Capacity sharing in a federation of distributed platforms

Abstract

Some embodiments provide a capacity exchange whereby capacity from different content delivery networks (CDNs) can be bought, sold, and traded. The capacity exchange is part of an “Open CDN” platform. The Open CDN platform federates the independent operation of CDNs and other operators of and service providers to distributed platforms participating in the Open CDN platform so that each participant can (1) dynamically scale its capacity without incurring additional infrastructure costs, (2) expand its service into previously untapped geographic regions without physically establishing points of presence (POPs) at those geographic regions, and (3) reduce sunk costs associated with unused capacity of already deployed infrastructure by selling that unused capacity to other participants that are in need of additional capacity. The Open CDN platform includes one or more APIs for facilitating intercommunication between the federation participants by performing configuration mapping, command interoperability, traffic management, and reporting aggregation.

A computer-implemented method for dynamically scaling server capacity of a first content delivery network (CDN) participating in a federation of a plurality of CDNs by leveraging server capacity of at least a second CDN from the plurality of CDNs, the computer-implemented method comprising:

serving first CDN customer content over a data network to a plurality of end users in a first set of geographic regions exclusively from a first set of content delivery servers operated by the first CDN;
serving second CDN customer content over the data network to a plurality of end users in a different second set of geographic regions exclusively from a different second set of content delivery servers the second CDN operates independent of the first set of content delivery servers operated by the first CDN;
identifying at the first CDN, (i) a particular geographic region of the first set of geographic regions underserved by the first set of content delivery servers and (ii) an amount of server capacity needed in the particular geographic region by the first CDN from one or more content delivery servers operated by at least one other CDN;
querying by the first CDN, a federation exchange comprising a plurality of server capacity instances offered by different CDNs of the plurality of CDNs with each server capacity instance being associated with at least one geographic region and an amount of server capacity provided by one or more content delivery servers operated by a CDN participating in the federation, wherein querying the exchange identifies a server capacity instance offered by the second CDN, wherein the second CDN offered server capacity instance provides the amount of server capacity to the particular geographic region needed by the first CDN from one or more content delivery servers operated by the second CDN;
deploying from the first CDN, a customer configuration for a particular customer of the first CDN to the server capacity of the second CDN identified in the server capacity instance as a result of said querying, said deploying comprising configuring the one or more content delivery servers of the second CDN server capacity instance with the customer configuration of the particular customer of the first CDN;
serving content of the first CDN particular customer over the data network to the particular geographic region from the one or more content delivery servers of the second CDN server capacity instance while simultaneously serving content of the first CDN particular customer over the data network to other geographic regions from the first set of content delivery servers of the first CDN;
and
providing at the first CDN, an interface from which the customer of the first CDN (i) modifies said customer configuration after deployment to the server capacity of the one or more content delivery servers operated by the second CDN and (ii) views content caching and serving performance results to the particular geographic region of said customer configuration after running on the server capacity of the one or more content delivery servers operated by the second CDN for some time, wherein said interface is not operated by the second CDN.

5 more elements

Facts

Application

13/226,261Filed 6 Sep 2011 · us provisional application

Priority

16 Aug 2011

Granted

6 Sep 2016

Term ends

Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification25 codes

G06Q 30/06
Commerce: buying, selling or leasing transactions
G06F 9/46
Using stored programs, i.e. using an internal store of processing equipment to receive or retain programs: multiprogramming arrangements
G06F 9/541
Interprogram communication: via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications
G06F 9/542
Interprogram communication: event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications

Capacity sharing in a federation of distributed platforms

Life of this patent

Capacity sharing in a federation of distributed platforms

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims16