Importance

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Abstract

In a network interconnecting a plurality of content providers and a plurality of clients, for providing content to a client, each of the plurality of content providers is coupled to at least one content distribution network of a plurality of content distribution networks, wherein the client is coupled to at least one of the plurality of content distribution networks and a request for the content is sent from the client to a redirector node that receives requests, wherein a redirector at the redirector node provides an address for a server available to serve the requested content. When the client's content distribution network is a primary content distribution network for the content provider providing the requested content, redirecting the client to a server within the client's content distribution network. When the client's content distribution network is not a primary content distribution network for the content provider but the client's content distribution network has a content peering relationship with a primary content distribution network for the content provider, redirecting the client to a server within the client's content distribution network. When the client's content distribution network is not a primary content distribution network for the content provider and the client's content distribution network does not have a content peering relationship with a primary content distribution network for the content provider, redirecting the client to a server outside the client's content distribution network. The redirecting can be done using a domain name service (DNS) server that responds to requests for domain name resolution that include metadata encoding for the content being requested and/or attributes of the resolution request other than a domain name or explicit client/redirector communication to perform the redirection.

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First Claim