Very likely. Netflix has a program where they ship edge cache appliances to ISPs free of charge.
Re:Using Goatse to Stop App Theft
by Lukas_Skywalker on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @03:37PM
(#37920471)
There are some public details about the program, and it's quite interesting: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/
I recall when they approached Verizon for the same thing; Verizon wanted rent[0].
this is how CDNs make their money. They replicate popular content close to the users. They generally do that WITHOUT giving anyone hardware, but by renting hardware in smaller areas, and setting up their own data centers in popular areas.
source: I used to work at Akamai (it was a while ago). The myriad things they do with their edge servers is pretty amazing, but for simple CDN stuff, most of the time clients aren't shipping hardware to isps. That being said, if Netflix can convince an isp to pay its electricity and hardware maintenance costs for a popular isp's customers that's going to pay for itself very quickly. So, i can see why Netflix offers this. It's just not normal AFAIK.
But Netflix was running at full HD with no problem. So they must have had local cache's with the ISPs.