Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
1–10 of 158 posts
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#2I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#3I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
and Netflix?
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#4This means their EBITDA now probably shows profitability (servers they own are amortizable [the A in EBITDA], where are AWS is expensed.)
Edit: Amortization/Depreciation can generally be used interchangeably.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#5I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
This article isn't an announcement - it's a "Why we did it". They started transitioning years ago.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#6I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
and Netflix?
They run BGP and do an enormous amount of IX peering. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/2906
AWS doesn't even let you do BGP. If you want to use them for a CDN, you're monopolized into their network and their blend of ridiculously overpriced bandwidth.
They might be using AWS for the canonical store of data, but the sanity of using "the cloud" goes out the window the second you need to ship a lot of traffic to the public internet.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#7Um, what is this crap? When did they actually move? How long did it take?
The title of this HN link leads you to believe this is recent, but the article makes it seem like a multi-year effort, that in fact, could have finished a long time ago.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#8I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
and Netflix?
To be fair, Netflix only runs some of their infrastructure on AWS. Basically, if I understand correctly, their applications run on AWS and their delivery is through their own CDN built on top of various ISPs[1].
[1] https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-...
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#9I'll be 100% honest, I didn't realize Dropbox was still on AWS. You figure at a certain scale it makes more sense to run your own solution.
and Netflix?
They have a completely different use case that benefits from being able to scale up and down quickly. I don't see them moving away from AWS anytime soon.
Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network
#10This means their EBITDA now probably shows profitability (servers they own are amortizable [the A in EBITDA], where are AWS is expensed.) Edit: Amortization/Depreciation can generally be used interchangeably.
Good point. I always wonder how such accounting changes truly reflect the financial performance of the company. On one hand it's a lot of upfront cost to Dropbox with high risk too but all that won't show up completely if this cost is amortizable over the long run.