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Dorian Aldrege

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Aug 2, 2024, 6:15:13 AM8/2/24

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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've never heard of Rocketfish cable but google search shows that it's just an HDMI cable. Did you switch (your TV remote) to HDMI input channel that corresponds to the correct HDMI input on the TV? Did you try plugging the cable into different HDMI input on the TV? Before it fails, did you change anything such as upgrading iOS, upgrading Netflix app or changing cable etc?

You can also use AirPlay to send the video to an Apple TV through your wireless network, although the Apple TV also has the Netflix app installed. Even then the Apple TV is a good addition to your home theatre for streaming other content off the iPad, iPhones, computer or video rentals for iTunes.

I've got an HDMI cable which normally transmits what I'm seeing on my iPad screen to my TV except when I try and play a Netflix movie I get a message (on the IPad) saying "Cannot Play Video - The connected display is not supported."

Thanks for quick reply. Is it possible my TV is just too old (2011) for this new technology (for e.g. it's not HDCP compliant - whatever that means)? If so, is using a Chromecast likely to produce any different result do you think?

I don't know what TV you're using. I got my LCD TV in 2009, older than yours but it works fine. As long as you have an HDMI input, you can use Chromecast device. Best part of it is the cost. I got mine for about twenty bucks.

II've been streaming Netflix through my iPad for awhile successfully. I have the cable. However now somethings not connecting...get message on tv "no signal". Could this be my settings on my tv remote? I it on component to Netflix. Sorry, not very technical. Any suggestions appreciated.

A friend put a Rocketfish cable on back of my Samsung tv and I plug that into my ipad2. I change the settings on my tv remote and its always worked well. Now I get a signal on tv "no signal". I can watch netflix on my ipad but it won't stream through to my tv.

With everything. plugged in, have you tried doing a hard reset of your iPad by holding down the. Home and sleep buttons simultaneously until the screen turns black and the Apple Logo appears and then let go of the buttons?

yes, I changed tv remote settings to component as the cable has several wires. Always worked before. Now just get "no signal"....it's like there's no connection. Netflix works just fine on my iPad but it doesn't stream to tv.

The adapters for iPads can be unreliable and aren't terribly rugged. I would highly recommend purchasing a Chromecast or better still an AppleTV. If you're getting an HDCP error, that would likely be a bad or old HDMI cable. I would first suggest a new HDMI cable. If the issue still persists it could be your TV.

Learn how to get Netflix on CarPlay with this another prestigious app known as LetsView. This intelligent digital screen-sharing platform can be used on multiple platforms for free. Just like the first app, LetsView has powerful technological features which include smarter screen mirroring, remote sharing, and more. With this app, you can have your iPhone easily connected to your CarPlay. On top of that, the app also supports some features like the ability to take screenshots, record your screen, and more. Enjoy watching Netflix movies with high resolution and no delay with this amazing app.