US 6,415,373 · Granted 2002-07-02

How Avid Solved the Multi-Stream Video Bottleneck

Imagine downloading a movie from Netflix while uploading a video to YouTube — both at full speed, no stuttering. This patent describes a system that breaks data into chunks, copies them across multiple servers, and always routes your request to the least-busy server. The result: smooth, reliable streaming no matter how many people are using the network at once.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a method for distributing data segments across multiple storage units where each segment is randomly placed on at least two different servers, and incoming requests are automatically routed to whichever server has the shortest queue of pending tasks. What's protected here is the specific combination of random segment distribution plus load-balancing routing — not just the idea of backup copies or load balancing alone, but the particular way they work together to handle multiple simultaneous data streams.

Why it matters

In the late 1990s, video editing and media workflows were bottlenecked by storage systems that couldn't reliably handle multiple editors or applications pulling large files simultaneously. Avid's patent addressed a real industry pain point: how to let many people access the same media library without one person's request starving everyone else. This kind of distributed-storage architecture became foundational to modern streaming services and cloud storage systems, though the patent itself has long since expired.

Real-world use

When you stream a 4K movie while someone else in your house uploads photos to the cloud, both happen smoothly because the server system is distributing their requests across multiple physical drives using this exact principle.

Original USPTO abstract

Multiple applications request data from multiple storage units over a computer network. The data is divided into segments and each segment is distributed randomly on one of several storage units, independent of the storage units on which other segments of the media data are stored. At least one additional copy of each segment also is distributed randomly over the storage units, such that each segment is stored on at least two storage units. This random distribution of multiple copies of segments of data improves both scalability and reliability. When an application requests a selected segment of data, the request is processed by the storage unit with the shortest queue of requests. Random fluctuations in the load applied by multiple applications on multiple storage units are balanced nearly equally over all of the storage units. This combination of techniques results in a system which can transfer multiple, independent high-bandwidth streams of data in a scalable manner in both directions between multiple applications and multiple storage units.

Patent details

Publication number: US 6,415,373
Filing date: 1998-01-12
Grant date: 2002-07-02
Assignee: Avid Technology, Inc.
Inventor(s): PETERS ERIC C., RABINOWITZ STANLEY, JACOBS HERBERT R., FASCIANO PETER J.
CPC class: H04N21/8456

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