USING VIRTUAL DOMAIN NAME SERVICE (DNS) ZONES FOR ENTERPRISE CONTENT DELIVERY

摘要

According to the invention, a domain to be published to an enterprise ECDN is associated (either by static configuration or dynamically) with a set of one or more enterprise zones configurable in a hierarchy. When a DNS query arrives for a hostname known to be associated with given content within the control of the ECDN, a DNS server preferably responds in one of three (3) ways; handing back an IP address, e.g., for an ECDN intelligent node that knows how to obtain the requested content from a surrogate or origin server; executing a zone referral to a next (lower) level name server in a zone hierarchy, or CNAMing to another hostname, thereby essentially restarting the lookup procedure. In the latter case, this new CNAME causes the resolution process to start back at the root and resolve a new path, probably along a different path in the hierarchy.