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Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

gizmodo.com

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Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#51

Post by rahimnathwani »

porpoisemonkey wrote: post #45
frio wrote: post #26

Isn't this just a CDN? ISPs quite happily host Akamai and Google nodes -- are they being paid for maintenance of those? Empirically, from an old job, the answer is no (in fact, we had to petition for quite a while to get some Google boxen), but that's in a country at the tail end of a long, long pipe. Is it different in the US?

What this article is describing sounds like a colocation agreement which is a quite common service offered by ISPs and is typically paid for by a monthly rental fee calculated by storage size, dedicated bandwidth use and power consumption.

It's not the same. If I want Verizon to host my server, they have nothing to gain, but I do. So, yes, they should charge me. If instead they host a CDN server for a big content provider, they save money on routing content within their network.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#52

Post by wmf »

qq66 wrote: post #49
josho wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some ISPs are trying to maximize their revenue by charging Netflix directly. There are a few other legitimate reasons as well. Some ISPs dislike hosting hardware that they don't own in their data centre. Or it may be that an ISP has contracts in place that commit the ISP to certain bandwidth costs, so removing Netflix traffic may not actually save them money.

Why shouldn't an ISP charge Netflix to host a box in their datacenter? I'd charge you a fee if you wanted to store your DVDs in my house, even if you let me watch them.

Because the box saves the ISP more money than its hosting costs.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#53

Post by jsz0 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #51
porpoisemonkey wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this article is describing sounds like a colocation agreement which is a quite common service offered by ISPs and is typically paid for by a monthly rental fee calculated by storage size, dedicated bandwidth use and power consumption.

It's not the same. If I want Verizon to host my server, they have nothing to gain, but I do. So, yes, they should charge me. If instead they host a CDN server for a big content provider, they save money on routing content within their network.

That's not always the case though. Sometimes rack space is more valuable to ISPs than improving bandwidth efficiency via CDN co-location deals. It really depends how much space you've got to spare and who else wants it.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#54

Post by xcrunner529 »

burkemw3 wrote: post #15
Thaxll wrote: post #5

Lot of mistakes in this article, afair it can't hold all the movies but just the most popular. http://oc.nflxvideo.net/docs/OpenConnect-Deployment-Guide.pd... " Each appliance stores a portion of the catalog, which in general is less than the complete content library for a given region. Popularity changes, new titles being added to the service, and re- encoded movies are all part of the up to 7.5TB of nightly updates…

In addition, Netflix has multiple copies of the same content at different quality levels. So, there might be the 1080p, 720p, and SD quality levels of the popular content, each of them taking up space from other movies/shows.

Forgot about that issue. That has to be fun providing space for all of the duplication!

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#55

Post by liveoneggs »

JTon wrote: post #8

Can anyone explain why an ISP would push back Netflix installing one of these boxes? Does the ISP want Netflix service congestion to better sell its own media assets/distribution (i.e. cable TV)?

because they own a competing service and don't care?

http://www.redboxinstant.com/

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#56

Post by liveoneggs »

jsz0 wrote: post #53
rahimnathwani wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same. If I want Verizon to host my server, they have nothing to gain, but I do. So, yes, they should charge me. If instead they host a CDN server for a big content provider, they save money on routing content within their network.

That's not always the case though. Sometimes rack space is more valuable to ISPs than improving bandwidth efficiency via CDN co-location deals. It really depends how much space you've got to spare and who else wants it.

a friendly ISP always has rack space.. When you own a few data centers for yourself space is easy to come by.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#57

Post by mirkules »

From my understanding, these boxes are basically local copies of the entire Netflix online catalog - a catalog that frequently changes. How do these ~15,000 machines pick up new content? I assume they synchronize with the Netflix mothership every once in a while.

My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system?

But it makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a distributed, localized caching system? For example, if I watch The Avengers, my machine could be configured to cache a part (or all) of the movie. The more people watch it, the more it is distributed. Since Netflix can correlate location data with what movies are watched, they can target certain areas to cache certain movies more aggressively. When the next person in my neighborhood watches The Avengers, they would pull part of the movie from me (maybe the beginning until the rest buffers) and cache another part of it themselves for the next person in line. That way all the people in my neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods don't have to pull the entire movie across the internet every time - instead, we help each other watch movies with higher quality.

On second thought, this may not be cheap considering the amount of development that may be required (and, at the end of the day, someone has to pay for this storage - although Netflix could, for example, offer personal mini-caching boxes in exchange for a monthly discount), but it's fun to dream about a sanctioned, decentralized, peer-to-peer movie service.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#58

Post by thefreeman »

mirkules wrote: post #57

From my understanding, these boxes are basically local copies of the entire Netflix online catalog - a catalog that frequently changes. How do these ~15,000 machines pick up new content? I assume they synchronize with the Netflix mothership every once in a while. My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system? But it makes me wonder if it would be po…

They mention in the article that typically each box downloads a 7.5TB update each day.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#59

Post by OvidNaso »

mirkules wrote: post #57

From my understanding, these boxes are basically local copies of the entire Netflix online catalog - a catalog that frequently changes. How do these ~15,000 machines pick up new content? I assume they synchronize with the Netflix mothership every once in a while. My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system? But it makes me wonder if it would be po…

This seems to be pretty close to what Popcorn Time does, and apparently does it very well. Their site says they already select individual files, so I imagine a 'sanctioned' Netflix style offering would be technically trivial to implement. This whole thing is just a reflection of the open internet/what went wrong debacle where all of this money that could be going to the content producers is instead spent on several layers of network, hardware and technical service providers that a small group from Buenos Aries has demonstrated is unnecessary if we could only, actually use, the network. But we can't.

Re: Netflix's Open Connect Appliances

#60

Post by bsimpson »

mirkules wrote: post #57

From my understanding, these boxes are basically local copies of the entire Netflix online catalog - a catalog that frequently changes. How do these ~15,000 machines pick up new content? I assume they synchronize with the Netflix mothership every once in a while. My question (without any intent to trivialize what Netflix is doing) is, isn't that just a good-old caching system? But it makes me wonder if it would be po…

A few weeks back, there was a job posting looking for someone with peer-to-peer experience to build such a prototype for Netflix, so it's definitely something they're considering. On the other hand, I don't know how people with data caps would feel about reseeding content for a corporation like Netflix.
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