SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RENDEZVOUS IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

The present invention introduces the notions of a rendezvous component and rendezvous functionality into the communications network environment. Using the invention, an application can express information regarding when an operation requested of a device should complete and at which location, and it enables the device to perform its operations respecting this information while also improving the device's overall behavior. In an embodiment, one or more data objects are distributed across one or more collections of storage devices using a dispersal technique. When access to a data object is desired, a rendezvous component issues a set of constituent requests to the collections of storage devices. These requests typically include location and timing rendezvous parameters specifying a destination location where and a given time when a given data object is to be reconstituted. The data object is then reconstituted at the destination location and at the given time, while respecting a given characteristic of a storage device access model. In this embodiment, the collection of storage devices may comprise disk devices, and the requests are issued by a given application, such as a media server.