Re:Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and D...
by waffle_ss on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:02PM
(#17333740)
Nobody in here seems to appreciate the networking complexity that Netflix deals with - they are 37% of North America's internet traffic! At that point the network isn't an abstraction that "just works" like most web apps; you have to be aware of physical and business realities that dictate traffic (e.g. negotiate peering agreements, deploy caching/CDN boxes to network POPs, etc.).
Re:Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and D...
by JetSpiegel on Sunday June 17, 2018 @03:25PM
(#17333864)
Or you can buy the CDN service from a myriad of companies in the world. It only takes money to get servers and bandwidth in many places.
Re:Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and D...
by petra on Sunday June 17, 2018 @04:03PM
(#17334028)
True. But depending on what's you guess on how much it costs for netflix to get a content hour watched by a user(maybe ~$0.1-0.2), streaming costs may become meaningful, and higher streaming costs becomes a strategic disadvantage.
Re:Netflix Is Why AT&T bought Time Warner, and Comcast and D...
by waffle_ss on Sunday June 17, 2018 @06:24PM
(#17334687)
Exactly. Excepting Cloudflare which is free, CDNs are expensive (or at least more expensive than I think people realize).
Netflix says it uses about 3GB of bandwidth per hour for streaming HD-quality video. CloudFront for one will charge you $0.26 for that 3GB-hour. It's pretty easy to see how binge watchers will rack up pretty high CDN/bandwidth bills.
As long as your platform meets some bare minimum standard of reliability (and every service I use seems to be able to) then content is the only thing that matters.
>And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.
I think you are way overestimating the complexity. Sure, it's not something two guys are going to produce in their bedroom, but video delivery is a solved problem.