Multi-output packet server with independent streams

Abstract

A method of serving content to multiple clients via a network is provided. Independent sessions with each of a plurality of clients are maintained, wherein the number of clients in the plurality of clients can vary over time, and wherein the start of each session and the end of each session can be independent of the start and end of other sessions. A stream of packet payloads is received, each packet payload of the stream of packet payloads including data generated from the content, wherein each packet payload in at least a subset of the stream of packet payloads includes a different set of data. Each packet payload in the stream of packet payloads is transmitted to each client of the plurality of clients in corresponding packets, wherein the packet payload transmitted to a client at any particular time is independent of the state of the corresponding session.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 274,445, filed Mar. 9, 2001, and entitled "MULTI-OUTPUT PACKET SERVER WITH INDEPENDENT STREAMS", which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002] The present invention generally relates to communications systems. In particular, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for delivering content in communications systems to multiple locations.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003] Digital content transmission between a server and multiple receivers over a communications channel has been the subject of much literature. In general, a design goal of a content delivery system is to allow each recipient to receive an exact copy of content transmitted over a channel by a server with some level of certainty. Hereafter, content may be a file, a stream of data or some other form of data. A content delivery system may...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

0019] In still another embodiment, a server for serving content to multiple clients via a network including a multicast network is provided. The server includes a storage device that stores the content to be served, the content including input symbols, and an encoding generator coupled with the storage device that generates output symbols from of the input symbols. The server also includes a transmitter coupled with the encoding generator and with the network that assembles the output symbols into multicast packets, wherein each mul

Problems solved by technology

If the number of clients is instead 1,000 then the disk contention problem is ten times worse.

Furthermore, if any of these resources is a bottleneck, then this resource will dictate the capacity of the server in terms of concurrent client downloads or streams.

One issue with this approach is that such a transmission is not reactive to congestion in the network, and may cause the intervening networking infrastructure to overload.

Such an overload may cause massive packet loss and may negatively i

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