In a network interconnecting a plurality of content providers and a
plurality of clients, for providing content to a client, each of the
plurality of content providers is coupled to at least one content
distribution network of a plurality of content distribution networks,
wherein the client is coupled to at least one of the plurality of content
distribution networks and a request for the content is sent from the
client to a redirector node that receives requests, wherein a redirector
at the redirector node provides an address for a server available to
serve the requested content. The redirecting can be done using a domain
name service (DNS) server that responds to requests for domain name
resolution that include metadata encoding for the content being requested
and/or attributes of the resolution request other than a domain name or
explicit client/redirector communication to perform the redirection.