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Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

highscalability.com

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Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#71

Post by pavs »

Terretta wrote: post #49
pavs wrote: post #6

Many of the things Netflix does here google does too and has been doing for a long time like GGC (Google Global Cache) for free at ISP NOC or datacenters - their GGC nodes are many orders of magnitude time is distribution. 90% of the Google traffic through these devices are youtube videos. They mention it in the article like Netflix pioneered this idea with open-connect. If anything it's harder to get OC devices from…

You react like Google pioneered these ideas. Many of the things Netflix does here, Google does too... but VDNs did before YouTube was a twinkle in Chad, Steve, and Jawed’s eye. The custom appliance proactive multi-tier video placement process outlined here, along with more techniques not mentioned (some of the most significant are only just now being rediscovered by non-CDNs such as Netflix or even AWS), were general…

My beef was not more like "who did it first", I honestly don't know and I couldn't find a reference online of anyone did something like this at this scale before google/youtube/akamai.

The Point is the global scale of this on-premise network and the amount of data they move. I think Netflix is a blip compare to youtube/google/Akamai/facebook (I recently learned facebook also has a similar program, but I think they also use Akamai), on a global scale. I didn't like that glossed on over this as if Netflix is doing something exceptional or even unique. Obviously, it takes some serious engineering chops scale this amount of traffic globally and routes the traffic through on-premise nodes. But at this point, it's not exceptional - if anything its commodity.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#73

Post by pavs »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #62
amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a bit like a violation of net neutrality avant la lettre.

It's good for everyone -- if you are an ISP with 35%+ of your traffic coming from Netflix, you might be begging for these boxes in your network.

Yup, as an ISP owner, I can tell you 70-75% of my traffic come through GGC, for every 1gbps traffic from cache nodes 100mbps on average is pulled from the internet. Even with GGC nodes, it's still very expensive, BW-wise.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#74

Post by mindfulplay »

wz1000 wrote: post #43
mindfulplay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What. Are. You. Talking. About.

What happens when I violate IP laws? The police comes knocking on the door, even though I didn't deprive anyone of anything or harm anyone in any way. The only reason companies like Netflix are able to exist in the face of alternatives that are many times better in every single way(like torrents) is because of this underlying foundation of violence.

Curious. how do you earn a living? How do you expect others to earn a living?

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#75

Post by will4274 »

Klathmon wrote: post #34
inciampati wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it was a comment questioning why they don't use torrents to provide their services. And also pointing out that p2p based solutions somehow outperform theirs in many cases (for me, not US based so the net neutrality stuff is maybe not relevant). Anyway sorry I was too silly and didn't clarify these points.

P2P has traditionally not worked out well for companies. Even recently Microsoft tried it for updates, and people were quite angry. I honestly don't see a situation where someone would prefer to use their own bandwidth for a paid service rather than having a server do the heavy lifting. Either as the provider, or the consumer.

> people were quite angry.

I don't think this is true. Some enterprises were concerned about the security aspects and asked for greater controls, which Microsoft provided, but Windows 10 has not removed P2P updates, AFAIK.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#76

Post by maxsilver »

ashark wrote: post #58
Walf wrote: post #17

I know what it does when I don't press play: fills my memory with a boatload of bloated interface that has the shittiest navigation of any media player I've ever used. And I still can't just view a list of all series/movies by date.

I’ve hated it since pressing play stopped being necessary to start video playing. Now I have to keep the focus bouncing around or else whatever it’s currently on will start yelling at me. Can’t just stop and look around at what’s on screen. It’s stressful. [EDIT] in fact, now that I think about it, I almost never just browse the catalogue anymore, while I used to a lot. I open it and go to search ASAP, then close it…

Yes. And it gets worse -- I really hate the new "fake auto-play".

On our Roku, if you sit on a movie or show for just a few seconds, Netflix starts auto-playing a video. But it's not the real show anymore, it's a weird custom-Netflix-made background advertisement for the show using random clips set to odd royalty-free stock music that is specifically not from the show/movie you are actually on and doesn't match. It kind of looks like they set some machine learning robot, or some poorly-paid Amazon Turk people, to generate these clips for much of the titles in their library.

Why? Why does this exist? What user testing or data could have happened for Netflix to decide to spend time/money/bandwidth/resources on this?

Not an earth shattering issue or anything. But it's a personal pet peeve to encounter this every time I turn on Netflix. It feels like they are trying to video-clickbait me, even after I've already paid them for everything.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#77

Post by erstap »

I feel like this article could be cut in half if it had been given a sharper focus. I don't care why I am seeing a specific image for a film and the reasoning for image personalization. Save that for a different article. I just want to know what happens after I click play.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#78

Post by wildmusings »

jedberg wrote: post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

Modern journalism in a nutshell. Now realize that most journalism is this sloppy, not just the pieces about things you happen to know about.

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#79

Post by oculusthrift »

wildmusings wrote: post #78
jedberg wrote: post #2

> I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. You know old time journalists had a solution to this. Interviewing subjects with first hand knowledge. I know I rag on highscalability a lot, but I feel like they deserve it. They've written multiple articles a…

Modern journalism in a nutshell. Now realize that most journalism is this sloppy, not just the pieces about things you happen to know about.

not true. many print news sources call their sources and sometimes verify each quote twice. i’ve heard stories from people who were simply quoted in a new yorker article about movies and they were called twice to verify their quote when it was just a small part of the article

Re: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

#80

Post by kfriede »

jedberg wrote: post #4
radicalbyte wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A really good way for you to get your point across would be to write a reactionary blog post detailing the actual information. Netflix seem to be pretty cool & open about things so it should be possible?

A good idea, except I haven't worked there in almost three years, so a lot of my knowledge it out of date. I have to start by interviewing my old co-workers! :)

"Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play (2014)" - 2017/12/25
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