

Netflix's Ken Florance: The Man Who Keeps the Video Streaming - yarapavan
http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-24/netflixs-content-delivery-chief-endures-isp-streaming-fees

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alayne
Here's the non mobile link:
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-24/netflixs-
con...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-24/netflixs-content-
delivery-chief-endures-isp-streaming-fees)

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chad-lundgren
The author of the article is following the lazy and tired "Point at that
hippie and laugh" formula, complete with a "Right on, man" ending. Maybe
that's expected for a mainstream publication like Businessweek?

Other than that, the article is interesting.

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pyre
Didn't you get the New Media Strategy Memo? You kick up controversy and write
as aggressively / polarized as possible and you gain page-views (i.e. money)
as people on both sides come to read the article before running off to social
media sites to argue endlessly about it.

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proksoup
Is an improvement from people having these disparate opinions and not
discussing them at all I hope.

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stevengg
talk netflix gave at NYCBSDCon NYCBSDCon 2014: Serving one-third of the
Internet via FreeBSD
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL5U4wr86L4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL5U4wr86L4)

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hackerguy0217
I think the FCC should get involved and ask the simple question of why can't
ISP's use Netflix open connect .. as it seems that would fix a ton of problems
the ISP are having with netflix incoming traffic.

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twoodfin
It doesn't really solve the fundamental issue: Because of the volume of
traffic Netflix generates, ISPs are highly sensitive to the size of Netflix's
audience and the bitrates Netflix chooses to stream. Both of those have the
potential to grow faster than their capability (or desire) to expand the
capacity of their networks.

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pyre
... on the other hand, the ISPs wouldn't be complaining about their own video-
streaming offerings expanding exponentially. The conflict-of-interest in this
whole back-and-forth between Netflix and large ISPs is so palpable that you
can almost taste it (very bitter :P).

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guiomie
The difference is that lots of ISPs have invested in IPTV networks, and those
are designed not to eat your bandwidth and clog the network.

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pyre
Netflix has offered to setup devices within the ISP network that will cache
the videos so that the ISP's users will stream from the cache rather than
directly from Netflix. The ISPs have refused (presumably because it competes
with their own offerings).

Everyone pretty much agrees that traffic over the ISP's internal networks
aren't really an issue; the big issue is the traffic over the network
connection points. There are solutions to alleviate this, but the ISPs aren't
really interested in these solutions. They feel that their monopoly position
gives them the power to dictate terms to everyone else, effectively holding
their (paying) customers hostage for ransom.

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twoodfin
_Everyone pretty much agrees that traffic over the ISP 's internal networks
aren't really an issue_

Everyone agrees with this? How did we get to that conclusion? Netflix is 1/3
of primetime internet traffic. If they double their average bitrate * average
viewing audience in, say, two years, that won't be a problem for ISPs'
internal networks? They're that over-provisioned?

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dtparr
Obviously, you can't say something that broad for all ISPs in all locations.
But in a recent dispute Verizon posted a graphic[1] showing that the max
average peak utilization in their network was 65% of capacity. So if Netflix
is 1/3 of that (say 22% capacity) and it doubles their average bitrate to all
customers, it would still not saturate the link.

[1] [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/07/verizo...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/07/verizon-netflix-chart-640x498.png)

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lukasm
HTTP? What does it mean? all HTTP requests except for the following domain?

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eightofdiamonds
I wondering the same thing myself. I did a bit of searching and found this:
[http://allthingsd.com/20130514/netflix-still-eats-a-third-
of...](http://allthingsd.com/20130514/netflix-still-eats-a-third-of-the-web-
every-night-amazon-hbo-and-hulu-trail-behind/)

According to that article it does mean all HTTP traffic other than the
specific sources listed in the chart.

