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At one point, Netflix video streaming accounted for something absurd like 20% of all Internet traffic in the country. Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibl

by lmkg 10y ago

At one point, Netflix video streaming accounted for something absurd like 20% of all Internet traffic in the country. Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibly well," I would imagine there are still novel issues with that much scaling. Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing to shuttle 5GB of data with no hiccups for an hour. Detecting and routing around machine or network issues fast enough that real-time video playback is not impeded sounds to me like a difficult challenge.

yomly 10y ago
Beat me to it. I am sure a large part Netflix's success is how seamless its products are: there's minimal to no loading time and the video stream is virtually always smooth - including during times of action/high frame rate. Creating a video streaming platform is one thing, but creating a content delivery platform that is effectively as reliable as TV that is also cost efficient is no small task if you ask me...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- johansch 10y ago
  Bullcrap. The tech is good enough (but not that much better beyond that level). >90% of the success comes from the content creation/licensing strategy/execution and marketing. I.e. non-tech. At this point it's a bit like arguing that Disney's great success in Bluray sales comes from their encoding/Bluray mastering expertise.
  - sheeshkebab 10y ago
    Tech part was "good enough" for last 20+ years - it's why most companies call their tech teams "IT department". There is however something about that last 5-10% where moving a few bits around the right way gives you business advantage, over places like Disney. That said, it does seem like some of this Netflix stuff is overbuilt, although I don't need to run tens of 1000's of ec2, so maybe it's worth it.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Tens of thousands of ec2 instances, none of which served any customer, if you red the article carefully.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - sethev 10y ago
    You seem to stumbling into the distinction between functional and non-functional requirements. Netflix spends massively more on content then tech so that's consistent with what you're saying. To use you're Disney example though, yes it would effect their success if they weren't able to deliver their content because their Bluray mastering expertise was lacking.
    - johansch 10y ago
      Exactly. The tech division, while overfunded and overengineered is fulfilling its role in a good enough way.
rsync 10y ago
"Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing to shuttle 5GB of data with no hiccups for an hour." Speaking of which ... I notice that while youtube continues to buffer video while paused, netflix (and many, many other video players online) do not. So while netflix will auto-adjust quality for you in response to a bad net connection, you can't just pause it, go brush your teeth, and come back with a big enough buffer to avoid skips through the entire video. When did video players stop buffering-on-pause ? Why was that choice made ? On the other end of the spectrum is whatever video player showtime online uses - it does not adjust quality and it does not buffer on pause. Basically it was built for perfect Internet connections and nothing else.
- sdflkd 10y ago
  > I notice that while youtube continues to buffer video while paused Not anymore, or at least not for long periods of time.
- savanaly 10y ago
  Probably too many cases where they deliver a bunch of content while it's paused and then the content never gets played. More than half the people who pause it probably end up closing the tab without finishing the video, so one can save a lot of bandwidth by only delivering the data when it's needed. A totally unsupported hypothesis.
  - yomly 10y ago
    I arrived at the same conclusion when I realised that YouTube no longer buffers the video all the way through to the end on mobile anymore. I miss being able to buffer a (long) video for offline playback when riding public transport.
    - joshbaptiste 10y ago
      Ditto, for this case I youtube-dl prior and watch on mobile VLC
user5994461 10y ago
> Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibly well," I would imagine there are still novel issues with that much scaling. I would imagine there is not. When you master something for 1%, you do 20% without too much hassle. (Let's remember that netflix is only serving a couple of videos to a lot of customers, that is embarrassingly parallel and cachable). About reliability. Video is one of the thing that has the least need for reliability. You can have thousands of hiccup during the hours, doesn't matter, nooone can see any of them. I expect most of the tech challenges to be in cost optimizations, not in delivering the service.

by lmkg 10y ago

yomly 10y ago

Beat me to it. I am sure a large part Netflix's success is how seamless its products are: there's minimal to no loading time and the video stream is virtually always smooth - including during times of action/high frame rate. Creating a video streaming platform is one thing, but creating a content delivery platform that is effectively as reliable as TV that is also cost efficient is no small task if you ask me...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
johansch 10y ago
Bullcrap. The tech is good enough (but not that much better beyond that level). >90% of the success comes from the content creation/licensing strategy/execution and marketing. I.e. non-tech. At this point it's a bit like arguing that Disney's great success in Bluray sales comes from their encoding/Bluray mastering expertise.
- sheeshkebab 10y ago
  Tech part was "good enough" for last 20+ years - it's why most companies call their tech teams "IT department". There is however something about that last 5-10% where moving a few bits around the right way gives you business advantage, over places like Disney. That said, it does seem like some of this Netflix stuff is overbuilt, although I don't need to run tens of 1000's of ec2, so maybe it's worth it.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Tens of thousands of ec2 instances, none of which served any customer, if you red the article carefully.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- sethev 10y ago
  You seem to stumbling into the distinction between functional and non-functional requirements. Netflix spends massively more on content then tech so that's consistent with what you're saying. To use you're Disney example though, yes it would effect their success if they weren't able to deliver their content because their Bluray mastering expertise was lacking.
  - johansch 10y ago
    Exactly. The tech division, while overfunded and overengineered is fulfilling its role in a good enough way.

rsync 10y ago

"Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing to shuttle 5GB of data with no hiccups for an hour." Speaking of which ... I notice that while youtube continues to buffer video while paused, netflix (and many, many other video players online) do not. So while netflix will auto-adjust quality for you in response to a bad net connection, you can't just pause it, go brush your teeth, and come back with a big enough buffer to avoid skips through the entire video. When did video players stop buffering-on-pause ? Why was that choice made ? On the other end of the spectrum is whatever video player showtime online uses - it does not adjust quality and it does not buffer on pause. Basically it was built for perfect Internet connections and nothing else.

sdflkd 10y ago
> I notice that while youtube continues to buffer video while paused Not anymore, or at least not for long periods of time.
savanaly 10y ago
Probably too many cases where they deliver a bunch of content while it's paused and then the content never gets played. More than half the people who pause it probably end up closing the tab without finishing the video, so one can save a lot of bandwidth by only delivering the data when it's needed. A totally unsupported hypothesis.
- yomly 10y ago
  I arrived at the same conclusion when I realised that YouTube no longer buffers the video all the way through to the end on mobile anymore. I miss being able to buffer a (long) video for offline playback when riding public transport.
  - joshbaptiste 10y ago
    Ditto, for this case I youtube-dl prior and watch on mobile VLC

user5994461 10y ago

> Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibly well," I would imagine there are still novel issues with that much scaling. I would imagine there is not. When you master something for 1%, you do 20% without too much hassle. (Let's remember that netflix is only serving a couple of videos to a lot of customers, that is embarrassingly parallel and cachable). About reliability. Video is one of the thing that has the least need for reliability. You can have thousands of hiccup during the hours, doesn't matter, nooone can see any of them. I expect most of the tech challenges to be in cost optimizations, not in delivering the service.