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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

#561

Post by parasti »

mbrumlow wrote: post #559
softwaredoug wrote: post #495

The way to deal with this is to constantly do live events, and actually build organizational muscle. Not these massive one off events in an area the tech team has no experience in.

I have this argument a lot in tech. We should always be doing (the thing we want to do) Somme examples that always get me in trouble (or at least big heated conversations) 1. Always be building: It does not matter if code was not changed, or there has been no PRs or whatever, build it. Something in your org or infra has likely changed. My argument is "I would rather have a build failure on software that is already re…

This is golden advice, honestly. "If you don't use it, you lose it" applied to software development.

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

#562

Post by jeffbee »

smegger001 wrote: post #557
dyauspitr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to break into sports because it’s such a big business and if you do sports you need to be able to stream live.

Because its the one area traditional networks have the advantage in

The marginal cost to add a viewer to broadcast sports is zero! That's what I am getting at. I know why someone would want this business, I just don't see what aspect of Netflix's existing business made them think they'd be good at it.

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

#563

Post by achow »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #553
mfiguiere wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The examples given here are not on the same scale. The numbers known so far: - 120m viewers [1] - Entire Netflix CDN Traffic grew 4x when the live stream started [2] [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jake-paul-... [2] https://x.com/DougMadory/status/1857634875257294866

Disney HotStar managed to stream ~60M livestreams for the Cricket world cup a year ago. The problem has been solved. Livestreaming sports just have a different QoS expectations than on demand. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-did-hotstar-managed-5-9-cr...

Size of Hotstar team = ~2000. Enggrs will be less than that number.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/disney-hotstar/people/

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

#564

Post by BlueTemplar »

phyrex wrote: post #454
diggan wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People just do not appreciate how many gotchas can pop up doing anything live. Sure thing, but also, how much resources do you think Netflix threw on this event? If organizations like FOSSDEM and CCC can do live events (although with way smaller viewership) across the globe without major hiccups on (relatively) tiny budgets and smaller infrastructure overall, how could Netflix not?

Scale changes everything, I don't think it's fair to shrug this off

Last I checked, p2p solves a lot of the scaling issues.

Haven't Asian live sports been using p2p already two decades ago ?

(What is the biggest Peertube livestream so far ?)

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

#565

Post by achow »

al_borland wrote: post #499
cryptozeus wrote: post #447

Everyone here talking like this something unique netflix had to deal with. Hotstar live streamed india va Pakistan cricket match with zero issues with all time high live viewership ever in the history of live telecast. Why would viewers paying $20 month want to think about their technical issues, they dropped the ball pure and simple. Tech already exists for this, it’s been done before even by espn, nothing new here.

The Independent reports 35m viewers of that cricket match [0]. Rolling Stone reported 120m for Tyson and Paul on Netflix [1]. These are very different numbers. 120m is Super Bowl territory. Could Hotstar handle 3-4 of those cricket matches at the same time without issue? [0] https://www.the-independent.com/sport/cricket/india-pakistan... [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jake-paul-...

India - Australia is the one of interest, scored cricket’s highest concurrent audience ever, 59 Million.

https://www.icc-cricket.com/news/biggest-cricket-world-cup-e...

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

#566

Post by geor9e »

softwaredoug wrote: post #495

The way to deal with this is to constantly do live events, and actually build organizational muscle. Not these massive one off events in an area the tech team has no experience in.

They've been doing live events since 2023. But it's hard to be prepared for something that's never been done by anyone before — a superbowl scale event, entirely viewed over the internet. The superbowl gets to offload to cable and over the air. Interestingly, I didn't have any problems with my stream. So it sounds like the bandwidth problems might be localized, perhaps by data center or ISP.

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

#567

Post by tempest_ »

bena wrote: post #446
dylan604 wrote: post #426

People just do not appreciate how many gotchas can pop up doing anything live. Sure, Netflix might have a great CDN that works great for their canned content and I could see how they might have assumed that's the hardest part. Live has changed over the years from large satellite dishes beaming to a geosat and back down to the broadcast center($$$$$), to microwave to a more local broadcast center($$$$), to running ded…

It is weird because this was a solved problem. Every major network can broadcast the Super Bowl without issue. And while Netflix claims it streamed to 280 million, that’s if every single subscriber viewed it. Actual numbers put it in the 120 million range. Which is in line with the Super Bowl. Maybe Netflix needs to ask CBS or ABC how to broadcast

When Netflix started it was the first in the space and breaking ground which is how they became a "tech" company that happens to stream media however it has been 15 years and since than the cloud providers have basically build "netflix as a service". I suspect most of the big streamers are using that instead of building their own in house thing and going through all the growing pains netflix is.

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

#568

Post by freefaler »

ctvo wrote: post #510

It’s insane the excuses being made here for Netflix’s apparently unique circumstances. They failed. Full stop. There is no valid technical reason they couldn’t have had a smooth experience. There are numerous people with experience building these systems they could have hired and listened to. It isn’t a novel problem. Here are the other companies that are peers that livestream just fine, ignoring traditional broadcas…

As a cofounder of a CDN company that pushed a lot of traffic, the problem with live streaming is that you need to propagate peak viewership trough a loooot of different providers. The peering/connectivity deals are usually not structured for peak capacity that is many times over the normal 95th percentile. You can provision more connectivity, but you don't know how many will want to see the event. Also, live events can be trickier than stored files, because you can't offload to the edges beforehand to warm up the caches.

So Netflix had 2 factors outside of their control

- unknown viewership

- unknown peak capacities outside their own networks

Both are solvable, but if you serve "saved" content you optimize for different use case than live streaming.

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

#569

Post by shrubble »

dylan604 wrote: post #480
tiluha wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but scale comes after production. Once you have the video encoded on a server with a stable connection the hard part is over. What netflix failed to do is spread the files to enough servers around the globe to handle the load. I'm surprised they were unable(?) to use their network of edge servers to handle the live stream. Just run the stream with a 10 second delay and in that time push the stream segme…

This right here is where I'd expect the failure to occur. This isn't Joey Beercan running OBS using their home internet connectivity. This is a major broadcast. I'd expect a full on broadcast truck/trailer. If they were attempting to broadcast this with the ($) option directly to a server from onsite, then I would demand my money back. Broadcasting a live IP signal just falls on its face so many times it's only the c…

Lumen has their Vyvvyx product/service which uses fiber for broadcast television.

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

#570

Post by andai »

mbrumlow wrote: post #559
softwaredoug wrote: post #495

The way to deal with this is to constantly do live events, and actually build organizational muscle. Not these massive one off events in an area the tech team has no experience in.

I have this argument a lot in tech. We should always be doing (the thing we want to do) Somme examples that always get me in trouble (or at least big heated conversations) 1. Always be building: It does not matter if code was not changed, or there has been no PRs or whatever, build it. Something in your org or infra has likely changed. My argument is "I would rather have a build failure on software that is already re…

This is great, but what possible counterargument is there? We should prolong indefinitely a spooky ambiguity about whether the system works or not?
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