Re:Serving Netflix Video Traffic at 800Gb/s and Beyond [pdf]
by rkagerer on Friday August 19, 2022 @10:30AM
(#32521420)
There's an old rule of thumb that each order of magnitude increase (10x) brings a whole new set of challenges.
Anecdotally I experienced this when scaling my software product from 1 --> 10 --> 100's --> 1000's etc. of users.
Thats not to say 2x can't be a substantial challenge, as you pointed out. It gets harder (and IMO more fun) when you're at the bleeding edge of your industry.
That's a 2X increase. Now do it again and a half for a 5x. Crazy to say there's a "scaling wall" that once you "pierce" it's easy to scale up. It's the opposite, McDonald's already knows how to supply and sell X McRibs a year, there's no company that's ever sold 5X those McRibs so they have to figure it out themselves.