6 ms·

As I understand it Netflix has hardware in ISP data centers to do exactly that. https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

newsclues 7y ago
Large residential buildings (condo and apartments) need a small edge Data Centre in them.
- pythonaut_16 7y ago
  This might be a more realistic compromise. Maybe if the industry can agree on an OpenConnect standard with some traffic shaping. Then Netflix, Hulu, Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, EA, Disney+, etc could all share the same edge CDN hardware. Then residential buildings, cities, individuals, whoever, could run their own caching hardware that would cache based on downstream demand.
cosmodisk 7y ago
That's quite something when a streaming service can go to the ISP with their hardware...
- spyspy 7y ago
  This is common for any company that operates a CDN. It just so happens Netflix is a big enough content deliverer that they run their own network rather than pay to use someone else’s.
- megablast 7y ago
  Pretty common.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  I was involved in starting a streaming service in SE Asia and the costs of 3rd party edge caching (Akamai etc) were significant. So much so that it made the business model non-viable without work arounds. Eventually we partnered with ISPs and piggybacked their edge caches.
capableweb 7y ago
Netflix might have data centers that gets closer, but nothing will ever get as far reaching and close as P2P would. A residential building who are all watching the same movie would only have to download the movie from building <> internet once. Replicate this system on every level (local network <> building <> city <> country) and you get so much more bandwidth available. Of course there are other considerations and we (humans) haven't worked as much on P2P as centralized systems, so only the future can tell us where the limit is.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  > Netflix might have data centers that gets closer, but nothing will ever get as far reaching and close as P2P would. A residential building who are all watching the same movie would only have to download the movie from building <> internet once. This assumes that residential internet connections act like a larger version of your home LAN. For all the ISPs that I know about in Australia, all of those connections are terminated within the ISPs network in a central location. This is done using PPPoE/IPoA which is handled generally at the state level. Even for HFC networks where the local node is a shared medium, you can't get client-client communications. Perhaps the situation is different for small WISPs, but I can't see it being too different for most people. Happy to learn more if you have examples.
  - stephen_g 7y ago
    With the NBN, most providers don’t use PPPoE anymore but instead just plain IP. Every NBN connection goes back to one of 121 Points of Interconnect (PoIs) (which is way too many by the way but was a dumb and misguided decision imposed by the ACCC). At the PoI it gets to the provider through a Network to Network interface (NNI). The provider’s switch that plugs in here is the earliest that a P2P connection could loop back (but only to somebody in the same region, that is, connected to the same PoI), and is also the closest that a Netflix OpenConnect device could be (although it might not be cost effective to rent the rack space there vs. putting it in a data centre in a capital city). A lot depends on the provider, however, on how they have structured their network. Apparently some do tunnel all their connections back from the PoI to a central location even though they don’t have to. But for most, I expect the provider’s backhaul to the PoIs in a state would all go back to the capital city of that state, which would then be interconnected to the neighbouring states capital cities (this is what the ISP I use, Aussie Broadband does at least).

newsclues 7y ago

Large residential buildings (condo and apartments) need a small edge Data Centre in them.

pythonaut_16 7y ago
This might be a more realistic compromise. Maybe if the industry can agree on an OpenConnect standard with some traffic shaping. Then Netflix, Hulu, Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, EA, Disney+, etc could all share the same edge CDN hardware. Then residential buildings, cities, individuals, whoever, could run their own caching hardware that would cache based on downstream demand.

cosmodisk 7y ago

That's quite something when a streaming service can go to the ISP with their hardware...

spyspy 7y ago
This is common for any company that operates a CDN. It just so happens Netflix is a big enough content deliverer that they run their own network rather than pay to use someone else’s.
megablast 7y ago
Pretty common.
rorykoehler 7y ago
I was involved in starting a streaming service in SE Asia and the costs of 3rd party edge caching (Akamai etc) were significant. So much so that it made the business model non-viable without work arounds. Eventually we partnered with ISPs and piggybacked their edge caches.

capableweb 7y ago

Netflix might have data centers that gets closer, but nothing will ever get as far reaching and close as P2P would. A residential building who are all watching the same movie would only have to download the movie from building <> internet once. Replicate this system on every level (local network <> building <> city <> country) and you get so much more bandwidth available. Of course there are other considerations and we (humans) haven't worked as much on P2P as centralized systems, so only the future can tell us where the limit is.

paranoidrobot 7y ago
> Netflix might have data centers that gets closer, but nothing will ever get as far reaching and close as P2P would. A residential building who are all watching the same movie would only have to download the movie from building <> internet once. This assumes that residential internet connections act like a larger version of your home LAN. For all the ISPs that I know about in Australia, all of those connections are terminated within the ISPs network in a central location. This is done using PPPoE/IPoA which is handled generally at the state level. Even for HFC networks where the local node is a shared medium, you can't get client-client communications. Perhaps the situation is different for small WISPs, but I can't see it being too different for most people. Happy to learn more if you have examples.
- stephen_g 7y ago
  With the NBN, most providers don’t use PPPoE anymore but instead just plain IP. Every NBN connection goes back to one of 121 Points of Interconnect (PoIs) (which is way too many by the way but was a dumb and misguided decision imposed by the ACCC). At the PoI it gets to the provider through a Network to Network interface (NNI). The provider’s switch that plugs in here is the earliest that a P2P connection could loop back (but only to somebody in the same region, that is, connected to the same PoI), and is also the closest that a Netflix OpenConnect device could be (although it might not be cost effective to rent the rack space there vs. putting it in a data centre in a capital city). A lot depends on the provider, however, on how they have structured their network. Apparently some do tunnel all their connections back from the PoI to a central location even though they don’t have to. But for most, I expect the provider’s backhaul to the PoIs in a state would all go back to the capital city of that state, which would then be interconnected to the neighbouring states capital cities (this is what the ISP I use, Aussie Broadband does at least).