Apparatus and method for caching of compressed content in a content delivery network

摘要

A content delivery network (CDN) edge server is provisioned to provide last mile acceleration of content to requesting end users. The CDN edge server fetches, compresses and caches content obtained from a content provider origin server, and serves that content in compressed form in response to receipt of an end user request for that content. It also provides “on-the-fly” compression of otherwise uncompressed content as such content is retrieved from cache and is delivered in response to receipt of an end user request for such content. A preferred compression routine is gzip, as most end user browsers support the capability to decompress files that are received in this format. The compression functionality preferably is enabled on the edge server using customer-specific metadata tags.

主权项

1. A content delivery method operative at a server to which a client machine has been directed by a content delivery network (CDN) request routing mechanism, the server having a cache, wherein the server is managed by a service provider and shared by a set of participating content providers that provide content to be delivered over the CDN, the content delivery method comprising:
upon receipt of a request for given content from the client machine that cannot be serviced at the server, fetching the given content from an origin server; determining whether the given content should be stored in the cache in an uncompressed or compressed form by evaluating a function trading off anticipated storage time in the cache versus processing overhead required to perform the compression; selectively storing the given content either uncompressed or compressed based on the determination, wherein the determination overrides a metadata tag that would otherwise dictate storage of the content in compressed form.