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Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

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Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#111

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

jameson wrote: post #99

Dumb question Isn't live streaming at scale already solved problem by cable companies? I never seen ESPN going down during a critical event

Yes, as I have said again and again on hacker news in different comments Netflix went overboard with their microservices and tried to position itself as a technological company when it's not. It has made everything more complex and that's why any Netflix tech blog is useless because it is not the way to build things correctly.

To understand how to do things correctly look at something like pornhub who handle more scale than Netflix without crying about it.

The other day I was having this discussion with somebody who was saying distributed counter logic is hard and I was telling them that you don't even need it if Netflix didn't go completely mental on the microservices and complexity.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#114

Post by anakaine »

gonzo41 wrote: post #95
rvz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Netflix is even designed to handle very extreme multi-region live-streaming at scale as evidenced in this event with hundreds of millions simultaneously watching. YouTube, Twitch, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc have all demonstrated to stream simultaneously to hundreds of millions live without any issues. This was Netflix's chance to do this and they have largely failed at this. There are no excuses or juniors…

They must have try to do this on the cheap, thinking they could dynamically scale on the fly for this. Big mistake.

This is a total supposition without any proof.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#115

Post by noncoml »

freditup wrote: post #8

I wonder if there will be any long term reputational repercussions for Netflix because of this. Amongst SWEs, Netflix is known for hiring the best people and their streaming service normally seems very solid. Other streaming services have definitely caught up a bit and are much more reliable then in the early days, but my impression still has always been that Netflix is a step above the rest technically. This sure do…

> their streaming service normally seems very solid

Not trying to downplay their complexity, but last I heard Netflix is splitting the shows in small data chunks and just serves them as static files.

Live streaming is a different beast

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#116

Post by a_random_name »

freditup wrote: post #8

I wonder if there will be any long term reputational repercussions for Netflix because of this. Amongst SWEs, Netflix is known for hiring the best people and their streaming service normally seems very solid. Other streaming services have definitely caught up a bit and are much more reliable then in the early days, but my impression still has always been that Netflix is a step above the rest technically. This sure do…

If Netflix still interviews on hacker rank puzzles I think this should be a wake up call. Interviewing on irrelevant logic puzzles is no match for systems engineering.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#117

Post by fragmede »

gonzo41 wrote: post #95
rvz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Netflix is even designed to handle very extreme multi-region live-streaming at scale as evidenced in this event with hundreds of millions simultaneously watching. YouTube, Twitch, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc have all demonstrated to stream simultaneously to hundreds of millions live without any issues. This was Netflix's chance to do this and they have largely failed at this. There are no excuses or juniors…

They must have try to do this on the cheap, thinking they could dynamically scale on the fly for this. Big mistake.

Their CDN is colo and doesn't run on AWS.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#118

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

rvz wrote: post #22

All these engineering blog posts, distributed systems and these complex micro-services clearly didn't help with this issue. Netflix is clearly not designed nor prepared for scalable multi-region live-streaming, no matter the amount of 'senior' engineers they throw at the problem.

This. Overly complex nonsense that they have built up is crazy and the fact that we on a tech forum agree to all of this is crazier.

It's almost like this platform has been taken over by JavaScripters completely.

Re: Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

#119

Post by moralestapia »

spencerchubb wrote: post #84
moralestapia wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can +1 with a similar anecdote. They obviously have some really good engineers, but many low-tier ones as well. No idea how long they stay there, though. I'm watching the fight now and have experienced the buffering issues. Bit embarrassing for a company that fundamentally only does a single thing, which is this. Also, yeah, 900k TC and whatnot but irl you get this. Mediocre.

livestream is quite different from streaming pre-processed video, so I'm not surprised by the scaling issues

I know.

But given how much they spend on engineering, how much time they had and how important this event is ... mediocre performance.

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