Invalidity dossier
US 7274658
Optimal route selection in a content delivery network
Current assignee: Akamai Technologies Inc
Added 9/21/2026, 9:32:17 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 7,274,658 B2
Title: "Optimal route selection in a content delivery network"
Patent number: US 7,274,658 B2 (application US10/087,033; pre-grant publication US2002/0163882 A1)
Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc. (original assignee; current assignee listed as Akamai Technologies, Inc.)
Inventors (as listed): Claudson F. Bornstein, Timothy K. Canfield, Gary L. Miller, Satish B. Rao, Ravi Sundaram
Key dates: Priority date 2001‑03‑01; filing date 2002‑03‑01; publication date 2007‑09‑25; legal status "Expired – Lifetime," with adjusted expiration 2024‑10‑20. (The source labels priority date, legal status, and assignee listings as assumptions, not legal conclusions.)
Purpose: The patent addresses finding the best way to route data between CDN regions and content providers while adjusting quickly to changing network conditions. Edge servers often must return to a content provider's origin server (e.g., for unavailable, stale, or non-cacheable content); existing routing can suffer from congestion, faults, packet loss, delay, cost-based routing, and peering/contractual constraints. The invention lets an edge server in a first CDN region fetch content from the origin through an intermediate CDN server or region ("tunneling"), avoiding congestion and hot spots.
Plain-language scope: Performance (e.g., download time) is measured by having the edge server initiate a file-download "race" — simultaneous downloads over multiple routes, some via intermediate nodes — and the winning path is used for transfers until the next race. Intermediate nodes/routes are chosen offline by a map-making process using network tests (pings; age, loss, latency) to compute best one- and two-hop paths from each CDN datacenter to the provider, publishing them as a "map" (e.g., via DNS). Usable intermediate servers may be set per content provider by policy or "strategy."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7274658/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not provide the full claims, detailed figures, complete specification, or claim-by-claim scope. It identifies related family publications (US 7,929,429 B2; US 8,194,538 B2; US 8,477,630 B2) but does not describe them. It also does not establish—and I did not research—litigation, ownership transfers, validity, or prior art.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:02:13 PM
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Litigation summary
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PTAB challenges
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Assignment history
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Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
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