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Azucena Mcquay
I pulled this chapter together from dozens of sources that were at times somewhat contradictory. Facts on the ground change over time and depend who is telling the story and what audience they're addressing. I tried to create as coherent a narrative as I could. If there are any errors I'd be more than happy to fix them. Keep in mind this article is not a technical deep dive. It's a big picture type article. For example, I don't mention the word microservice even once :-)
Given our discussion in the What is Cloud Computing? chapter, you might expect Netflix to serve video using AWS. Press play in a Netflix application and video stored in S3 would be streamed from S3, over the internet, directly to your device.
Another relevant factoid is Netflix is subscription based. Members pay Netflix monthly and can cancel at any time. When you press play to chill on Netflix, it had better work. Unhappy members unsubscribe.
The client is the user interface on any device used to browse and play Netflix videos. It could be an app on your iPhone, a website on your desktop computer, or even an app on your Smart TV. Netflix controls each and every client for each and every device.
Everything that happens before you hit play happens in the backend, which runs in AWS. That includes things like preparing all new incoming video and handling requests from all apps, websites, TVs, and other devices.
In 2007 Netflix introduced their streaming video-on-demand service that allowed subscribers to stream television series and films via the Netflix website on personal computers, or the Netflix software on a variety of supported platforms, including smartphones and tablets, digital media players, video game consoles, and smart TVs.
Netflix succeeded. Netflix certainly executed well, but they were late to the game, and that helped them. By 2007 the internet was fast enough and cheap enough to support streaming video services. That was never the case before. The addition of fast, low-cost mobile bandwidth and the introduction of powerful mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, has made it easier and cheaper for anyone to stream video at any time from anywhere. Timing is everything.
Building out a datacenter is a lot of work. Ordering equipment takes a long time. Installing and getting all the equipment working takes a long time. And as soon they got everything working they would run out of capacity, and the whole process had to start over again.
The long lead times for equipment forced Netflix to adopt what is known as a vertical scaling strategy. Netflix made big programs that ran on big computers. This approach is called building a monolith. One program did everything.
What Netflix was good at was delivering video to their members. Netflix would rather concentrate on getting better at delivering video rather than getting better at building datacenters. Building datacenters was not a competitive advantage for Netflix, delivering video is.
It took more than eight years for Netflix to complete the process of moving from their own datacenters to AWS. During that period Netflix grew its number of streaming customers eightfold. Netflix now runs on several hundred thousand EC2 instances.
The advantage of having three regions is that any one region can fail, and the other regions will step in handle all the members in the failed region. When a region fails, Netflix calls this evacuating a region.
The header image is meant to intrigue you, to draw you into selecting a video. The idea is the more compelling the header image, the more likely you are to watch a video. And the more videos you watch, the less likely you are to unsubscribe from Netflix.
The first thing Netflix does is spend a lot of time validating the video. It looks for digital artifacts, color changes, or missing frames that may have been caused by previous transcoding attempts or data transmission problems.
A pipeline is simply a series of steps data is put through to make it ready for use, much like an assembly line in a factory. More than 70 different pieces of software have a hand in creating every video.
The idea behind a CDN is simple: put video as close as possible to users by spreading computers throughout the world. When a user wants to watch a video, find the nearest computer with the video on it and stream to the device from there.
In 2007, when Netflix debuted its new streaming service, it had 36 million members in 50 countries, watching more than a billion hours of video each month, streaming multiple terabits of content per second.
At the same time, Netflix was also devoting a lot of effort into all the AWS services we talked about earlier. Netflix calls the services in AWS its control plane. Control plane is a telecommunications term identifying the part of the system that controls everything else. In your body, your brain is the control plane; it controls everything else.
In 2011, Netflix realized at its scale it needed a dedicated CDN solution to maximize network efficiency. Video distribution is a core competency for Netflix and could be a huge competitive advantage.
The number of OCAs on a site depends on how reliable Netflix wants the site to be, the amount of Netflix traffic (bandwidth) that is delivered from that site, and the percentage of traffic a site allows to be streamed.
Within a location, a popular video like House of Cards is copied to many different OCAs. The more popular a video, the more servers it will be copied to. Why? If there was only one copy of a very popular video, streaming the video to members would overwhelm the server. As they say, many hands make light work.
Right now, up to 100% of Netflix content is being served from within ISP networks. This reduces costs by relieving internet congestion for ISPs. At the same time, Netflix members experience a high-quality viewing experience. And network performance improves for everyone.
What may not be immediately obvious is that the OCAs are independent of each other. OCAs act as self-sufficient video-serving archipelagos. Members streaming from one OCA are not affected when other OCAs fail.
I already had accounts with online movie and television services like Netflix and Hulu, but I also needed a way to access these services on my television. My Xbox 360 has ended up becoming a major part of my media center. But has it been worth the effort and cost?
Putting Microsoft hardware in the living room was a primary goal of the original Xbox. But it's only recently that this has translated into a device that can serve as a media center. That's because the Xbox 360 has received frequent software updates that adds access to new services.
Are these options sufficient for most people? I think the answer is yes, but only if you subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu Plus. I've spent most of my time getting by with only a Netflix subscription, but I also tend not to be concerned with watching current TV shows. If you are thinking of going this route I recommend giving Hulu Plus a whirl and then dropping it if you do not use it.
There's more to a media center than the content you can access. How you access it is also important. A frustrating, slow or unstable user interface can ruin everything. Just ask people who bought the Boxee Box the day it came out.
Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have served the current rendition of the interface before it was fully baked. It uses the Metro UI, and it certainly looks good. However, navigation could be more responsive. I find the Netflix app to be particularly frustrating because the interface often freezes as it is loading a video, which is a problem if you hit the wrong option and want to go back.
Another issue that might burn your bottom is the presence of advertisements. As we'll discuss more in a moment, using the Xbox 360's online features isn't free. Yet you still are presented with advertisements for movie trailers, games and services.? These ads are not intrusive, but the presence of them in a service you're already paying for is a bummer.
Microsoft's terms of service might be aggravating, as well. Their most recent version declared that anyone using the service is entirely subject to arbitration and can't participate in class action lawsuits. So if Microsoft messes up and loses your data to some third party, you're out of luck.
One of the main reasons why you might be interested in kicking your television service out the door is the price. Even basic plans with a limited channel selection are often priced at $20 or $30 per month.
Is the Xbox 360 cheaper? Let's assume that you do not have an Xbox 360 and that you want to sign up for Netflix and Hulu Plus. We will also assume that the cost of Internet is not included, since you would have it anyway. Here's how the pricing breaks down.
You may end up with some other hardware costs if you decide to buy peripherals like the miniature keyboard or the media remote, but they are not massively expensive. Even Kinect, which can be used for gesture-based navigation, is only $99 on its own.
There are competitors, and some of them are extremely good. One crowd favorite is the Roku. At a price of $99 for the most powerful version (the Roku 2 XS), the hardware is much less expensive. It also offers a wider range of service. The Xbox 360 may have Netflix and Hulu Plus, but it is missing Amazon Instant Video. And it will always be missing Amazon Instant Video because the service competes with Microsoft's own Zune Marketplace.
If that is your only goal, my answer is no. The Xbox 360 has access to a fair amount of content, but it also requires an Xbox Live subscription and the hardware is expensive. Competitors like Roku are less expensive.
You shouldn't ignore the Xbox 360's other features, however. Most obvious of these is the fact it plays games. Even if you're not a hardcore gamer you may find a couple of titles that are appealing to you. This can easily tilt the scales back in the console's favor. There are benefits to the 360, as well. It can play media files from computers on your network or through built-in apps, it can be used as a DVD player, and it offers nifty peripherals that enhance your experience.
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