Researchers Map Locations of Servers in Netflix’s Content Delivery Network

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/researchers-map-locations-of-4669-servers-in-netflixs-content-delivery-network

by keepper • 10 years ago

84 36 10 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

jakozaur• 10 years ago

Direct link: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.05519v1.pdf

socmag4• 10 years ago

Thanks, much better!

anc84• 10 years ago

How many did they find in Kansas?

boulos• 10 years ago

It's interesting to contrast this with the Google Global Cache nodes at the edge (https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure). As Netflix expands globally, will they be in just as many locations? (Perhaps not because streaming video is less latency sensitive than API responses and search results).

I'm also curious if the public disclosure of this info means the researchers didn't bother to do the same reverse engineering for say YouTube?

Disclosure: I work at Google on Cloud, but don't work on edge caching.

eatbitseveryday2• 10 years ago

Zero severs in Russia, China, Turkey, India..? Over 2 bn. people left out of the market? I know not all have network access, but still. Not Russia or India at least?

throwaway1974• 10 years ago

https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-pia-exits-russia-serve...

Russia is not a friendly country to do business in

China is closed off behind the Great Firewall and probably already has a local netflix clone

India, I do not know, could be cost issues?

inopinatus• 10 years ago

India could be a tax issue.

As a tech sector APAC manager I have been instructed more than once not to visit. Not for any internal conference, and definitely not for any customer contact, and to take verifiable steps to avoid making "management decisions" if visiting for a holiday. Typical quote, "You do not want to be the guy that triggered tax obligations for us in India".

IANAL but I believe it's due to the broad framing of India's "place of effective management" rules.

This sort of thing ends up being mostly to Singapore's benefit, transnationals won't place their APAC region office in India as a result.

pyvpx2• 10 years ago

talk to the licensing lawyers and copyright holders. it has nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with licensing content.

witty_username• 10 years ago

India has about 50-60 ms RTT to SG so it isn't that much of an issue.

rospaya• 10 years ago

Outside of the US, content on Netflix varies from "bad" to "meh".

pluma2• 10 years ago

To be fair, so do most competitors.

In Germany Netflix is "meh" but the only half-decent alternative is Amazon Prime, which isn't better at all.

eatbitseveryday2• 10 years ago

Why not use VPN services like F-Secure + Netflix to access movies? Is Netflix blocking them? I imagine they should not be, because of the recent ISP-throttling scandals.

socmag4• 10 years ago

Can anyone provide more information on the server infrastructure than this article:

http://www.techhive.com/article/2158040/how-netflix-streams-...

It claims each server serves up to 10,000 streams simultaneously. So operational peak capacity is at ~50M simultaneous streams.

Also, 10k streams at 1080p would be ~70Gbps per machine at full HD, or ~20Gbps per machine at SD. With some blend of course being the norm.

There is of course a big difference between being capable of and actual and FUD.

I'd really love to know what the internals of one of their streaming servers might look like.

Anyone here who has architected a box with that capacity?

socmag4• 10 years ago

Someone pointed out the original paper, which has better estimates than my back of the napkin calculation for traffic throughput. Good stuff.

Still would love to know more about the internals of their servers and support infrastructure.

pyvpx2• 10 years ago

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/

I believe there are some slight differences between what Netflix uses and the OpenConnect machines placed inside ISP networks, but not by very much.

jlgaddis• 10 years ago

I recall seeing presentations at various FreeBSD events from Netflix folks talking about them, so a search for something like that might find what you're looking for.

If memory serves... SuperMicro motherboards, multiple Mellanox/Chelsio 10 Gbps NICs (probably upgraded to 40 Gbps by now, or getting close to that point), a bunch (up to 28, perhaps?) of hard drives (with no/little redundancy for thecontent), and a ton of RAM (for ZFS ARC).

They run on (heavily tuned) FreeBSD operating system.

milliams• 10 years ago

In a similar vein there's a project at the moment to map the world's internet infrastructure called The New Cloud Atlas (http://newcloudatlas.org) which describes itself thus:

The New Cloud Atlas is a global effort to map each data place that makes up the cloud in an open and accountable way. We have set out to find and map each warehouse data centre, each internet exchange, each connecting cable and switch. Anything of any physical significance in the operation of the cloud should be observed is some way, and recorded for everyone to see and use.

juandazapata2• 10 years ago

I thought that the "Netflix CDN" was AWS.

SteveNuts• 10 years ago

Hasn't been for a while, the egress would be insanely expensive.

They use devices they call "Openconnect" for peering in ISPs https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

juandazapata2• 10 years ago

Thanks for clarifying. Very informative.

joezydeco2• 10 years ago

I have a friend that runs IT for a large college campus in the Midwest. They not only have a Netflix cache, but an Apple one as well.

The Netflix one runs at a few gigabit/sec at all times. The Apple one keeps the WAN from going down on update day.

Something1234• 10 years ago

What cache server do they use?

philjohn• 10 years ago

Netflix provides their own - https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

I would imagine Apple provides something similar.

betaby• 10 years ago

Honestly, why that's research worthy? That's not a new knowledge, that's information is somewhat known to all employees, partners, various NMS vendors, ISPs. 'Nice' graph and latex formatted article doesn't make that scientific research. I guess there is to much useless "since" in style of 'I run ping/traceroute from the couple of locations and here is my scientific research'.

kafkaesq• 10 years ago

It's not about "ping and traceroute"; it's about organizing and mapping the data (both logically and geographically) that come out tools like ping and traceroute.

They aren't saying they've demonstrated quantum teleportation, or anything. But for the subject matter at hand (and given that Netflix runs one of the largest CDNs in the world), it's quite impressive.

bjt• 10 years ago

It sounds like Netflix's host naming scheme is what made it possible for the researchers to do this. I assume that means using regions and incrementing counters in the hostnames.

Who wants to bet that in the next year we'll see their hostnames change to be random-looking instead?

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

This won't happen. It would cause havoc when attempting to work with peering partners and transit providers when troubleshooting.

Researchers Map Locations of Servers in Netflix’s Content Delivery Network

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