Dynamic binding for use in content distribution

Abstract

Provided are methods and systems for dynamic binding in the context of content delivery. For example, the methods and systems may be implemented as a dynamic binding process that maps a content provider to a first set of content servers in a content distribution network. The dynamic binding process may then facilitate the content to be received from the content provider so that the content can be distributed by the first set of content servers in the content distribution network. The dynamic binding process further monitors network traffic associated with the content from the content provider and determines at least one metric associated with the network traffic. Additionally, the dynamic binding process can remap the content provider to a second set of content servers in the content distribution network based on at least one of the metrics.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELDEmbodiments presently disclosed generally relate to managing capacity on a content distribution network (CDN). More specifically, embodiments herein relate to binding of CDN customers to servers on the CDN.BACKGROUNDThe Internet and the so-called World Wide Web (the “WWW”) have become ubiquitous. Thousands or even tens of thousands of so-called content providers (publishers) now use the Internet (and, particularly, the WWW) to provide all sorts of content to tens or even hundreds of thousands of clients all over the world.In order to offload the job of serving some or all of their content, many content providers now subscribe to so-called content delivery networks (CDNs). Using a CDN, some (or all) of a content provider's content can be served to clients (e.g., users who request content) from the CDN (i.e., from one or more servers in the CDN) instead of from the content provider's server(s). In a caching CDN, content that is served may also be cached on some or all o...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Embodiments presently disclosed generally relate to dynamically determining server capacity to allocate to a customer of a CDN. Embodiments further include methods and systems for associating a CDN customer with one or more servers in a CDN. Associating a CDN customer with one or more servers in a CDN is referred to herein as binding. When a customer is bound to a server or server cluster at least a portion of the server or server cluster handles distribution of the customer's content to clients. Binding can be changed dynami

Problems solved by technology

In an ideal world, all possible content would be stored on proximate edge servers; however, in reality such an arrangement is impractical because of limited resources and costs associated with operation of the content servers.

If too much server capacity is allocated to a customer, the servers may be relatively idle, while allocating too little server capacity to a customer may result in overloading on servers.

To complicate matters, distribution of different sized content objects results in different load characteristics.

Further, as popularity of a customer's content changes, earlier decisions as to which servers and how much server capacity to handle the customer's content may no longer be appropriate.

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