Method and apparatus for cached content delivery to roaming devices

摘要

In one aspect, the method and apparatus disclosed herein enable a high-quality content viewing experience for users viewing user-specific content via their mobile devices operating within a mobile communication network, based on intelligently caching the content in the network using one or more distributed caches. For example, in one or more embodiments, a cache management server dynamically manages the distribution of user-specific content to one or more of the distributed caches, based on known or expected user locations, so that the content resides in the distributed cache or caches closest to the user locations.

主权项

1. A method of caching content for delivery to a user device via a mobile communication network having distributed caches corresponding to different service areas within the mobile communication network, said method comprising:
identifying a first distributed cache for a first service area corresponding to a location detected or expected for the user device; determining the content for caching in the first distributed cache, based on content caching at a user-specific cache belonging to a content delivery network affiliated with a user of the user device; and initiating caching of the content in the first distributed cache for delivery to the user device via the mobile communication network at least when the content is not already available in the first distributed cache for delivery to the user device; wherein initiating the caching of the content in the first distributed cache is performed on a conditional basis, responsive to determining that the content is not available in the first distributed cache for delivery to the user device; and wherein determining that the content is not available in the first distributed cache for delivery to the user device comprises at least one of: determining that the content is not present in the first distributed cache, and determining that digital rights management information needed for delivery of the content to the user device is not present in the first distributed cache.