Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by kortilla » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 12:59 AM UTC

unoti wrote: post #662

mbrumlow wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 1. Always be building: It does not matter if code was not changed... > 2. Always be releasing... A good argument for this is security. Whatever libraries/dependencies you have, unpin the versions, and have good unit tests. Security vulnerabilities that are getting fixed upstream must be released. You cannot fix and remove those vulnerabilities unless you are doing regular releases. This in turn also implies having…

Unless the upstream dependency happens to maintain stable branches, constantly pulling in the latest branches increases your risk of vulnerabilities more than getting the discovered bug patches

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

#742

Post by MattDaEskimo » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:00 AM UTC

devit wrote: post #730

grogenaut wrote: post #702

This topic is really just fun for me to read based on where I work and my role. Live is a lot harder than on demand especially when you can't estimate demand (which I'm sure this was hard to do). People are definitely not understanding that. Then there is that Netflix is well regarded for their engineering not quite to the point of snobbery. What is actually interesting to me is that they went for an event like this…

Why is live a lot harder? Aside from latency (which isn't much of a problem unless you are competing with TV or some other distribution system), it seems easier than on-demand, since you send the same data to everyone and don't need to handle having a potentially huge library in all datacenters (you have to distribute the data, but that's just like having an extra few users per server). My guess is that the problem w…

I'm not an expert in this, but at least familiar with the trade.

I'd imagine with on-demand services you already have the full content and therefore can use algorithms to compress frames and perform all kinds of neat tricks to.

With live streaming I'd imagine a lot of these algorithms are useless as there isn't enough delay & time to properly use them, so they're required to stream every single pixel and maybe some JIT algorithms

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

#743

Post by reaperducer » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:02 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #696

dilyevsky wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of superbowl viewers watch it on cable. Streaming gets fewer than 10M concurrents

Do people even have cable TV anymore? I have internet from my "cable" company but I don't have the "cable" connected to anything but the modem. Everything I watch is streamed. The only thing connected to my TV is a Roku.

Do people even have cable TV anymore?

Six seconds on the Google shows 58 million households in the United States. So, roughly 145,000,000 people.

You make the tech bubble mistake of believing that high speed internet is as ubiquitous as coax.

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

#744

Post by dartos » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:04 AM UTC

leptons wrote: post #714

dpkirchner wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? A common complaint by outsiders is that Netflix uses microservices. I'd love to hear exactly how a monolith application is guaranteed to perform better, with details . What is the magic difference that would have ensured the live stream would have been successful?

I doubt a "microservice" has anything to do with delivering the video frames. There are specific kinds of infrastructure tech that are specifically designed to serve live video to large amounts of clients. If they are in fact using a "microservice" to deliver video frames, then I'd ask them to have their heads examined. Microservices are typically used to do mundane short-lived tasks, not deliver video.

There’s very likely a dedicated service for delivering frames.

That’s service would technically be a “microservice” even if it is a large service.

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

#745

Post by gist » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:05 AM UTC

throwaway106382 wrote: post #681

It's incomprehensible to me that Netflix, one of the most highly skilled engineering teams in the world - completely sh*t the bed last night and provided a nearly unwatchable experience that was not even in the same league as pre-internet live broadcast from 30 years ago.

I had buffering issues but then backed off and let a bit of it buffer up (maybe 1 or 2 mintues?) and then it was fine for the entire Tyson Paul match. There was no reason I needed it to be live vs. a 1 or 2 minute delay.

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

#746

Post by reaperducer » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:06 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #723

cabinguy wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you know the answer to your questions is: of course they do. However, I’m in the same boat as you. The joke’s on us, I guess.

I guess my question is: why? "Cable boxes" are uniformly awful to use in my experience. The UI is clunky, they take up space and it's another remote and another tangle of wires to try to hide. What advantage do they offer in 2024?

What advantage do they offer in 2024?

They exist in places where the internet infrastructure is not adequate for constant multiple streams.

Content is king. And there's lots of content on cable that is not on streaming. Just consider local and regional news and sports.

Many residential buildings, like the one in which I live, include cable TV with the rent. Why add more clutter and expense for streaming?

There are plenty of other reasons. Your position seems to be "stop liking things I don't like."

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

#747

Post by gist » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:06 AM UTC

throwaway106382 wrote: post #710

ilaksh wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is that a technical manager told his executive (multiple times) that he needed more resources and engineering time to make live work properly, and they just told him to make do because they didn't want to spend the money. It could come down to something as stupid as: Executive: "we handled [on demand show ABCD] on day one, that was XX million" Engineering: "live is really different" Executive: (arguing about w…

hopefully their stock takes a big hit monday - these types only understand one thing

Are you serious? You think they don't care about this except if the stock 'takes a bit hit'??

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

#748

Post by reaperducer » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:07 AM UTC

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.

In 2012 Youtube did the Red Bull stratos live stream with 8m concurrent users

8m vs 60m. And not in 4K. Not a great choice for comparison.

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

#749

Post by nemothekid » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:07 AM UTC

devit wrote: post #730

grogenaut wrote: post #702

This topic is really just fun for me to read based on where I work and my role. Live is a lot harder than on demand especially when you can't estimate demand (which I'm sure this was hard to do). People are definitely not understanding that. Then there is that Netflix is well regarded for their engineering not quite to the point of snobbery. What is actually interesting to me is that they went for an event like this…

Why is live a lot harder? Aside from latency (which isn't much of a problem unless you are competing with TV or some other distribution system), it seems easier than on-demand, since you send the same data to everyone and don't need to handle having a potentially huge library in all datacenters (you have to distribute the data, but that's just like having an extra few users per server). My guess is that the problem w…

On demand is easier precisely because having a huge library in all data centers is relatively cheap. In actuality you just have a cache, collocated ISPs that pulls from your origin servers. Likely you have users all watching different things so you can easily avoid hot spots by sharding on the content type. Once the in demand content is in the cache its' relatively easy to serve.

Live content is harder because it can't really be cached, nor, due to TLS, can you really serve everyone the same stream. I think the hardest problem to solve is provisioning. If you are expecting 1 million users, and 700,000 of them get routed to a single server, that server will begin to struggle. This can happen in a couple different ways - for example an ISP who isn't a large consumer normally, suddenly overloads its edge server. Even though your DC can handle the traffic just fine, the links between your DC and the ISP begin to suffer, and since the even is live, it's not like you can just wait until the cache is filled downstream.

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

#750

Post by Edman274 » Sun, Nov 17, 2024, 1:09 AM UTC

survirtual wrote: post #733

shermantanktop wrote: post #698

Every time a big company screws up, there are two highly informed sets of people who are guaranteed to be lurking, but rarely post, in a thread like this: 1) those directly involved with the incident, or employees of the same company. They have too much to lose by circumventing the PR machine. 2) people at similar companies who operate similar systems with similar scale and risks. Those people know how hard this is a…

For an event like this, there already exists an architecture that can handle boundless scale: torrents. If you code it to utilize high-bandwidth users upload, the service becomes more available as more users are watching -- not less available. It becomes less expensive with scale, more available, more stable. The be more specific, if you encode the video in blocks with each new block hash being broadcast across the n…

The protocol for a torrent is that random parts of a file get seeded to random people requesting a file, and that the clients which act as seeds are able to store arbitrary amounts of data to then forward to other clients in the swarm. Do the properties about scaling still hold when it's a bunch of people all requesting real time data which has to be in-order? Do the distributed Rokus, Apple TVs, Fire TVs and other smart TVs all have the headroom in compute and storage to be able to simultaneously decode video and keep old video data in RAM and manage network connections with upload to other TVs in their swarm - and will uploading data to other TVs in the swarm not negatively impact their own download speeds?