Is it really a competitive advantage though? I would think that their brand and content library are the main ones. A CDN server doesn't really count IMHO: other streaming services can create their own appliances, though I'm guessing they'll use Linux due to its ubiquity.
Though as a long-time FreeBSD fan and part-time user, I'm happy for the patches. I run a large Isilon OneFS cluster, and so hopefully these changes will help in NFS performance. :)
There is another aspect to this contribution: the FreeBSD kernel code is ever-changing, so unless Netflix wants to carry forward this patch internally into the future, it is prudent to get it committed upstream so it can be cared for by the community at-large.
It totally is. These things get installed into ISP racks. ISPs have limited space and power for these things. One box pushing 200Gbps in the same space is twice as good (although, note they have 4x100Gbps NICs in this generation, there's room for more perf here).
Reducing the number of nodes helps with management of the network as well.
Also a shame that it is TLS'd. The content already has its own DRM/encryption.
E.g. every 64k block contains a SHA256 hash of the next 64k block. When a user seeks, you provide the hash of the first block they'll be receiving over a trusted channel. (It already can exist at start of stream RSA signed or whatever).
But that's probably a pain when you have so many different devices to support.
(It also makes it harder to figure out what content people are watching... Though I think they use variable bitrate encoding which will fall to traffic analysis).
https://wicg.github.io/webpackage/draft-yasskin-http-origin-...
The important feature of the scheme that I mentioned is that there's no per-client encryption needed, except maybe a small operation on each client seek in the stream. In general, you just serve the file, and the file contents are self-authenticating against tampering.
You might use signed HTTP exchanges to push the first hash in the chain on a seek, I guess. Or just run it over TLS. Or just have a 64k block pre-signed at the beginning stream with the hashes of 2k chosen seek points that the client can store.
You can go back and look at Netflix presentations from when they switched to TLS, and they were no longer able to saturate their network cards (and here, they're at 50% on network still)
But (a) what other streaming services even have CDN appliances, and (b) of the ones that do, which are using FreeBSD as a base?
If none of Netflix's competitors will use this patch, then it makes no material difference whether they share it or not.
B) as far as I'm aware, everyone else is running Linux, except maybe one of the CDNs, but I don't know if that CDN is actually running appliances.
However, everyone and their uncle are launching a streaming service in the next 18 months, some of those might get enough traffic to justify appliances, and they can take Netflix's work here to get a competitive box off the bat.
Also, at any point, one of the current big guys can say "hey, netflix gets 200gbps from one box, why do we have 4? Why don't we try FreeBSD on some of these"
CDN appliances are pretty isolated, so it doesn't matter as much if most of their proprietary stack isn't ported. Chances are, they've got someone on staff with FreeBSD experience, and FreeBSD experience ages better, because there's less churn.
I believe technology as a whole is light-years ahead of where it would be if companies treated all of their findings and system designs as closely-guarded secrets. I am relatively early in my career and I get to open-source a project that I have been working on for the first time and it feels great.
They might give the advantages away if they release everything, so that others can simply deploy it or offer it as a hosted solution. But the pure documentation what they did are more like advertisements for interesting engineer work @ Netflix.
"Top U.S. CEOs say companies should put social responsibility above profit" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jp-morgan-business-roundt...
It's even more amazing to me that this is a successful tactic in light of the fact that there's no shortage of people willing to work for ad-tech firms. If working for a company with good values was such a draw, you'd think it would give them more of a competitive advantage. Maybe the real reason is that Netflix's "good values" are genuine, not just a draw for employees. I'm really not sure.
Worse yet is I’ve met some really cool people in the space but it is still ad tech
https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-...
Netflix still has to work things out and get the last mile ISPs to play ball ($$$).
But this potentially saves Netflix a whole ton on transit.
It is abit like Facebook Sharing their work on Servers Hardware and Database improvements. Ultimately they dont think any of those technology are their completive advantage , their core business is Social ( and Ad Tracking, but that is another topic ).
Similar to Netflix, and would be the same as Disney. Their core business is not in the delivery, but the content.
Having said that it is still very nice of them to share their work. FreeBSD, Ruby Rails, Chaos Engineering, there are lots of things I love about their Tech Stacks.
I get that, in part, this is a way to get people excited to work for Netflix, however, the people working on this are, probably, pretty proud of what they achieved and thus like to share it with us, their colleagues at other places of work and they have the freedom to do so because of our industry's great track record of knowledge sharing.