| CPC H04L 67/5682 (2022.05) [H04L 67/02 (2013.01); H04L 67/568 (2022.05); H04L 67/63 (2022.05)] | 14 Claims |

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1. A system for requesting a bid for serving and/or caching a data object-in a Content Delivery Network (CDN), the system comprising:
at least one receiver;
at least one transmitter; and
at least one processor,
wherein the system is a Content Service Provider (CSP) server or an upstream Content Delivery Network (uCDN) node,
and wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
use the at least one receiver to receive a data object request to serve the data object, the data object request identifying the data object,
use the at least one transmitter to transmit bid requests to a plurality of downstream CDN (dCDN) nodes comprised in the CDN, the bid requests comprising information relating to the data object and requesting the plurality of dCDN nodes to provide a bid value for serving and/or caching the data object,
determine a best bid from one or more bid values received in response to the transmitted bid requests, the received one or more bid values is based on at least one of the following parameters:
availability of resources in the dCDN node;
availability of the data object in one or more memories of the dCDN node;
content provider of the data object;
proprietor of the system;
expected popularity of the data object; or
content type of the data object; and
use the at least one transmitter to redirect or forward the data object request to the dCDN node in the CDN which transmitted the best bid and/or request the dCDN node in the CDN which transmitted the best bid to cache the data object.
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