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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

#621

Post by eqvinox »

criddell wrote: post #596
eqvinox wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your device type has no influence on your provider and its bandwidth characteristics. If you're on Comcast, Apple can't magically make it not suck.

It isn't Apple, it's Netflix. Remember back in 2014 or so when Netflix users on Comcast were getting slow connections and buffering pauses? It didn't affect people who watched Netflix via Apple TV because Netflix served Apple TV users with a different network. > In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn’t having quality problems. The reason for this is that…

Ah, Thanks, I see what you're saying now and it makes a lot of sense. Just didn't grok it from your previous post, Sorry!

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

#622

Post by freefaler »

treflop wrote: post #610
freefaler wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that provisioning vast capacity for peak viewership is expensive and requires long-term commitment. Some providers won't give you more connectivity to their network unless you sign a 12 month deal where you prepay that. Peak traffic is very expensive to run, because you're building capacity that will be empty/unsused when the event ends. Who'd pay for that? That's why it's tricky and that's why Akamai…

Then sign a contract with Akamai, who has been in business for 25 years? You outsource if you aren’t planning to do something very often. There is no middle ground where you commit a mediocre amount of resources, end up with downtime and a mediocre experience, and then go “but we saved money.”

Well, they didn't want to spend the money or more likely their own technical team/boss promised that they can do it themselves.

They indeed have a great CDN network, but it's not very good for this particular type of traffic. May be they will know/fix/buy next time...

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

#623

Post by mmcgaha »

dylan604 wrote: post #483
colesantiago wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole point of chaos engineering that was invented at Netflix, which tests the resiliency of these systems. I guess we now know the limits of what "at scale" is for Netflix's live-streaming solution. They shouldn't be failing at scale on a huge stage like this. I look forward to reading the post mortem about this.

Everyone keeps mentioning at scale. I seriously doubt this was an "at scale" problem. I have strong suspicion this was a failure at the origination point being able to push a stable signal. That is not an "at scale" issue, but a hubris of we can do better/cheaper than broadcasting standard practices

I am not sure that it is an issue with the origination point. In fact I just thought it was my ISP because my daughter's boyfriend was watching and doing facetime with her and my video was dropping but his was not. I have 2gb fiber and we regularly stream five TVs without any issue, so it should not have been a bandwidth issue.

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

#624

Post by spaceywilly »

Thaxll wrote: post #591

In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users. We're 12 years later, Netflix fucked up.

To me the difference is that in 2012, you had companies focusing on delivering a quality product, whether it made money or not. Today, the economic environment has shifted a lot and companies are trying to increase profits while cutting costs. The result is inevitably a decline in quality. I'm sure that Netflix could deliver a flawless live stream to millions of viewers, but the question is can they do it while making a profit that Wall Street is happy with. Apparently not.

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

#625

Post by justinsaccount »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #620
rashabd wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brevity

Writing APPL instead of Apple doesn’t get you any fewer keystrokes.

also, the symbol for apple is AAPL.

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

#626

Post by chgs »

shrubble wrote: post #569
dylan604 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve been using vyvx since it was called global crossing/genesis, it was fairly unique when it started, but point to point ip distributon of programs has been the norm for at least 15 years. Still have backup paths on major events on a different technology, you’d be surprised how common a dual failure on two paths can be. For example output from the euro football this summer my mai paths were on a couple of leased lines with -7, but still had a backup on some local internet into a different city just incase there was a meltdown of the main providers network (it’s happened before with ipath, automation is great until it isn’t)

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

#627

Post by egypturnash »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #608
xyst wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making excuses for a multibillion dollar company that has been in this game for many years. Maybe the first to market in streaming. This isn’t NFLX’s first rodeo in live streaming. Have seen a handful of events pop up in their apps. There is no excuse. All of the resources and talent at their disposal, and they looked absolutely amateurish. Poor optics. I would be amazed if they are able to secure another exc…

Sorry for the off topic but what’s this thing that I only come across in Hacker News about referring to a company by their stock exchange name (APPL, MSFT, etc) outside of a stock context? It seems really weird to me.

I just assume it's people who spend too much time thinking about the stock context.

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

#628

Post by burntalmonds »

geor9e wrote: post #566
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.

Yeah, I think people are incorrectly assuming that everyone had the same experience with the stream. I watched the whole thing and only had a few instances of buffering and quality degradation. Not more than 30 seconds total during the stream.

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

#629

Post by YZF »

ethbr1 wrote: post #395
YZF wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely these devices use different media formats and/or quality levels. And yes, it's possible one device buffers more than the other. Infinite freezes sounds like some routing issues or bugs.

When I was watching the behavior on the tv, was wondering if buffering sends some separate, non-business-as-usual requests, and that part of Netflix's delivery architecture was being overloaded. E.g. "give me this previous chunk" vs "send me the current stream"

Buffering typically just consumes the same live stream until there's enough in the buffer. No difference other than the request rate being potentially higher. At least I can confidently say that for the standard players/video platforms. NetFlix could be doing something different. I'm not sure if they have their own protocols. But I'd be very surprised if the buffering used a completely different mechanism.
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