Content Delivery

摘要

A system for delivering content at varying qualities from a server to multiple client across a network has a server side converter and a client side converter. The server side converter makes unicast requests to a server for representations of content and converts these to multiple representations to be delivered as multicast streams. The client side converter receives a request for content from clients, determines a representation of content to obtain and subscribes to an appropriate multicast stream. The client side then converts the multicast stream back into segments available to a client by unicast request. In this way, data is delivered efficiently across a network from a server side to a client side whilst maintaining compatibility that client devices can issue traditional unicast requests.

主权项

1. A system for delivering content at varying qualities from a server to multiple clients across a network, the content being arranged in representations of differing qualities, each representation comprising segments addressable by client requests, comprising:
a server side converter arranged to
issue unicast requests to the server for segments of multiple representations of the content;convert each of the multiple representations of the content to respective multicast datagram streams, each representation being assigned to a corresponding multicast IP address; anddeliver the multicast datagram streams onto the network; a client side converter arranged to
receive requests for content from the clients;determine a representation of the content to obtain;subscribe to the multicast datagram stream that comprises the determined representation of the content; andconvert the multicast datagram stream back to segments available to the client by unicast request.