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Kerrie Gingrich
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.
Hello everyone. I purchased a sonos bean gen 2 only 3 months ago and suddenly the speaker stopped working with the TV and only works when I watch Netflix or Amazon Prime. No sound comes out if I'm using any of the tvs apps I even tried connecting a laptop via HDMI but nothing. I reset the speaker and reinstalled it but the problem remains.
Thank you buzz and ratty. It is a Samsung TV. I tried powering off both the sonos and TV for more than 2 min, removed the hdmi cable and reset it again but no luck. Maybe I'll try reseting the TV to factory settings...
Same here. Nothing on Netflix works. Youtube is fine. I have also noticed that the choice of subtitles on Netflix has changed. A lot of films seem to have lost the ability to choose subtitles in the original language.
I just plugged mine in for the second time and nothing. Doesn't work at all. The light is on but nothing shows up on the screen. Yes, I checked the HDMI connections, which works fine for my Roku; yes, I restarted it; yes, I did the test thing. But I guess I'm not gonna be able to use it, or Peacock.
Yes i agree. I guess they are giving it away because it does not work and they don't won't to offer support. There are a lof people here with the same problem and no response so i guess they don't monitor the forums. Perhaps some nice customer will figure this out and help us since comcast does not want seem to have the resources. I have the same problem.
I'd like to help resolve the Netfllix app launch issues you're experiencing. We'll start examining your account. Could you please send me a private message (including First Name, Last Name and Account Number) so I can connect with you as we trouble-shoot and may need to request/pass along account-specific information? Please also send along any other details on what you're seeing on-screen when this problem occurs. Thank you.
Can you describe here what you have a question about or what you're looking for information on? Once you share that, myself, or a fellow user or one of our Care colleagues can weigh in. As a general guideline, we like to keep the conversation in the public Community Forum -- unless a private exchange is needed (e.g., if account details might help investigate an issue), and in which case an Official Employee will let you know. Thank you!
I just got the Flex streaming box and set it up today only to discover that Netlix wouldn't load. It wouldn't even take me to the sign in screen, just closed after a few seconds and took me back to the Flex home screen. I used the chat option on the Xfinity mobile app and approximately an hour and a half later I am now watching Netflix. There is a solution, they just make you work for it. The reps name was Zoher, he was the 2nd person I spoke with but he was able to fix the issue.
Posting on behalf of my father.
His netflix is not working in his house when connected to WIFI on any device. Disconnected from the wifi and use 4G and it works fine.
Virgin box is connected wirelessly and network test show it connected and working.
I downloaded the netflix app on my mobile and connected to his wifi - does not work. I try youtube while connected to the wifi and it works, google works etc etc. Disconnect from the wifi and netflix work it.
Seems like there is something on the wifi blocking netflix?
Hey @JamesB93,
Welcome to the Community Forums and thanks for the post.
Sorry to hear you father is having this issue with his Netflix, can you confirm for me is there any error codes or messages when you are trying to access Netflix at all?
Joe
I will need to have another look. They basically refer to netflix not being connected to the internet but clicking the button that says network test on the same screen shows that wifi is connected.
I got T-Mobile 5G Home Internet today and after setting it up, Netflix app in not working on any of my devices., but other apps work file. Netflix works fine with my Cellular connection on my phone. I have the Nokia Gateway.
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