Netflix Open Connect Network

PTT Forum December 2012 Flavio Amaral (South America Network Strategy)
1

Overview
Introduction to Netflix
Netflix in Brazil
Peering and Plans for 2013
Open Connect, the Netflix Content Delivery Network
Embedded ISP Caches (Open Connect Appliances)

Introduction to Netflix
Internet television
Subscription service (R$14,99/ms)
A catalog of movie and television shows
Personalized recommendations
Support for wide variety of platforms, including computer
based players, game consoles, mobile, set top boxes
and smart televisions
HTTP adaptive bitrate video delivery with custom
intelligent client software
3

Netflix in Brazil
Service Launched in September 2011
Streaming millions of hours of entertainment each week
Also available across the rest of the Americas and parts
of Europe
Bitrate limits on some ISPs to avoid low usage based
billing caps

Peering
Present at PTT-BR IX in Sao Paulo
First PoP activated in August 2012
Second PoP being activated this month.

More than 20 Gbps of peak traffic and growing

Also serving content via IPv6, more than 10 Mbps

ISP Time Weighted Bit Rate for Netflix

ISP Time Weighted Bit Rate for Netflix

4000

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

Netflix in Brazil 2013

Bring content closer to the users
Go outside of Sao Paulo
Peering at other PTT IXs
Embedded ISP Caches

The Netflix Open Connect Appliance (OCA)

Developed in response to ISP requests to help scale Netflix
traffic efficiently
Reduces ISP cost by serving Netflix traffic from the local ISP
datacenter, rather than upstream network interconnects
Speeds up internet access for consumers to all third-party
internet sites, because Netflix traffic is no longer a source of
middle-mile or backbone congestion
Netflix bears the capital and maintenance costs, not ISP
ISP provides space, power and a network port
An OCA is a component of the Netflix CDN(vs a transparent
cache)
10

Why Deploy a Netflix OCA?

Netflix data is a significant percentage of ISP traffic in the
markets we serve
Serve 90% of Netflix traffic from the local ISP datacenter
Remaining traffic can be served by upstream OCAs, peering
Saves on transit, transport and other upstream scaling costs

Provided free of charge to participating ISPs

ISPs with >= 3 Gbps of Netflix traffic
ISP provides rack space, power, 10 Gbps optical port(s)

OCA Operation
Used exclusively for Netflix content
Completely integrated with the Netflix content delivery system
Greater effectiveness than transparent or proxy caches (90% with
Netflix OCA, versus 20-50% with other caches)

Efficient content fill mechanisms

Outside peak times (ISP selected time and BW per OCA)
OCA offline during fill, staggered fill recommended.
Fill can source from neighboring, peer or transit OCAs
~5TB fill per day (i.e ~4Gb/s for ~2.5 hrs)

OCA must be reachable by end users (port 80)

OCA Hardware
Space optimized: 4U highdensity storage
Power optimized for low power/
cooling requirements (500W)
Redundant 10GE optical
network interfaces
Redundant power supplies (AC
or DC)
Software:

FreBSD 9.0
NGINX HTTP server
BIRD BGP

Detailed specification on our

project website
13

OCA Provisioning
Preconfigured: ISP unpacks and racks unit, plugs in
power and network
OCA are shipped with pre-loaded content, immediately
deliver network offload
The appliance you receive is the same field- proven
appliance Netflix uses in its own data centers and
peering locations.

Directing Clients to OCAs

Netflix Control Servers
Broadband ISP

Netflix OCA

3. Client connects to local OCA

4. Local OCA delivers video stream

User routing is done by

Netflix control servers,
not dependent on client
DNS configuration
Request is routed to the
nearest available OCA
Working sets of popular
content deliver up to 90%
network offload

Network Positioning
OCAs are installed close to aggregations of end users
Netflix works with ISPs to determine proper location
and user-to-OCA mapping
ISP Controls Traffic Flow
End-user netblocks are associated with OCA via BGP advertisement
OCAs only serve content to netblocks provided by ISP
ISPs choose peak throughput each OCA is allowed to generate

Scaling/Redundancy
Typical configuration includes N+1 redundancy
Netflix works with ISP capacity planning to ensure
desired upstream network savings are achieved
Peering and Neighbor failover
IX peering recommended for fill, overflow and failover
Open Connect System designed as carrier class ISPs
do not need to keep significant headroom on transit links
to handle OCA failure.
Multiple OCAs can store some similar (popular) and
some different content to increase offload %

OCA Maintenance and monitoring

Monitored and supported by Netflixs 24x7 NOC
Engineered to be highly resilient
Appliance-style software management: OS and
applications are firmware, updated automatically
No field service required

OCA DRM
Worry-free for all types of networks
The content stored is encrypted with industry-standard
Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology
Obtaining keys to unlock the DRM content requires realtime interaction with our control servers
Only authorized subscription accounts can authenticate
to the control servers to obtain license keys to play
content
Our DRM systems have been reviewed and approved by
our content licensors
19

Not only movies

Technology
Technical blog: http://techblog.netflix.com/
Eureka
Hystrix
Edda
Asgard
Chaos Monkey

Open Connect details: https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect

20

Questions?
Contact:
famaral@netflix.com
Additional information, including
peering and caching information:
http://openconnect.netflix.com/