Efficiently serving large objects in a distributed computing network

摘要

Techniques are disclosed for improving the serving of large objects (equivalently, large files) in distributed computing networks which include network-attached storage ("NAS"). Existing features of Hypertext Transfer Protocol ("HTTP") and of Web server implementations are leveraged to achieve performance improvements in a novel way, and thereby greatly facilitate introduction of the present invention into existing networking environments. In particular, objects meeting certain criteria may be served using "redirect files" in which a redirect status code is used to cause content retrieval requests to be automatically redirected from the requesting client device to the NAS, such that the requested content is served from the NAS rather than through a Web server from a Web server farm.