SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CAPACITY SHAPING IN AN INTERNET ENVIRONMENT

A system and method for dynamically shaping available capacity of multi-media objects based on aggregated demand across distributed media/world-wide-web servers. Demand statistics (e.g., volume and density) for a given web object are used to characterize aggregated behavior with respect to request arrival time. The system dynamically shapes capacity by controlling, over time, the number of replicas of objects made available to such requests as well as the placement of such replicas. The system also enables on-demand replication of web objects across web servers by providing: (a) a ranking criteria to prioritize among web objects according to past demand; and, (b) a trigger criteria to determine when to apply the capacity shaping mechanism. The system effectively allows one or more media servers to share the streaming resources provided by a globally shared media server in such a way that the capacity of each media server is temporarily, and transparently augmented as needed to match predicted demand for its objects.