How Netflix Works?

ThaiNOG

8th May 2019

NETFLIX CONFIDENTIAL

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Jocelyn Ooi

• > 148 million members

• > 190 countries

How

Works

Inventing Internet TV:

• The architecture of internet streaming

• Quality of Experience

• Cost

DATA PLANE Open Connect

Content

Delivery

Network

CONTROL PLANE

STREAM NETFLIX DEVICE

before streaming starts = control plane =

streaming = data plane = Open Connect

Data Plane (streaming playback)

Open Connect

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Q: What is a Content Delivery Network?

A: Geographically distributed content servers attached to networks

+ a way of routing requests to the closest (and/or best performing)

server / network path

History

Streaming Launched (“EHub”)

2007

Third Party CDN 2009

Open Connect 2011

Hardware Open Connect Appliances

Designed for bulk storage of the entire large regional content catalogs

“Storage” appliance

High-throughput servers, used to serve very popular content

“Flash” or “Offload” appliance

Open Connect connects directly to residential ISP networks. 95% of our traffic is directly connected.

We provide free Open Connect Appliances for Internet Service Provider (ISP) data centers

We also provide interconnection to ISPs at Internet Exchange locations throughout the world

wait, what’s an IXP?

An Internet exchange point

(IX or IXP) is

a physical infrastructure

through which

Internet Service

Providers (ISPs)

and

Content Delivery

Networks (CDNs)

exchange Internet traffic

between their networks

-wikipedia

Singapore

Equinix

SG

3

Netflix Site

© 2015 Netflix Inc

Single CORE Sample Configuration o 1 Site, 2 OCAs in a redundant configuration

o OCAs can be clustered for cache fill o Connections to 2 Core Routers

NETFLIX

Core

Router-1

Bangkok

Core

Site

Core

Router-1

PARTNER

PROVIDED

SPACE/Power

Core

Router-2

OCA-1 OCA-2

NETFLIX

Core

Router-

2

IX

SW1

IX

SW2

NETFLIX

PROVIDED

EQUIPMENT

IX Connection IX Connection

NETFLIX CONFIDENTIAL

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Control Plane (streaming setup)

Determine the preferred experience DEVICE TITLE

CONNECTIONS

LOCATION

NETWORK

Broadband - wired or

wifi

Cellular - Edge, 3G,

LTE, ...

LANGUAGE

HDCP support,

etc.

That’s exactly what I want

...now where can I get it?

GENERATE PLAYBACK MANIFEST

PLAYBACK MANIFEST

PLAYBACK

This is how we steer the request to the correct server/network/location

LICENSE

Content Filling

pre-

positioning

Caches fill while you sleep

Files are copied off-peak (in the middle of the night) when networks are not loaded, using pre-positioning algorithms

CONTENT RANK

PREDICTABLE VIEWING PATTERNS

Using the purpose-built Open Connect network, we can copy each new Netflix show into a region once, then show it thousands or millions of times.

Networks are dimensioned for peak capacity

Off-peak cache fill is “free”

peak

required

upstream

capacity

1 Tbps

peak required

Netflix

capacity

350 Gbps

ISP

IS

P cu

stom

er

hom

es

peak

required

upstream

capacity

650 Gbps

peak required Netflix capacity 0

ISP

IS

P cu

stom

er

hom

es

Insight into performance Quality of Experience

input rate (from network)

output rate (to screen)

buffer level

video buffer (leaky bucket)

The Tradeoff

quality interruption risk

playdelay

https://openconnect.netflix.com

Questions?

Thank you!