Brett, You've previously stated: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-457.htm "$20 per mbps per month" "1.25 gigabits of bandwidth coming in"
Math: $20/mb/month * 1250mb = $25,000month If netflix is 1/3 of bandwidth... saving 1/3 of $25,000 -=> $8,000/month. (OK, Keep 100mbps for Netflix to pre-populate, 100mbps is 30TB/month) (Now I'm curious how many GB/month Netflix pre-populates, hmmm) How would "4U of rent" and 500W($50) electricity *not* save money? If it's a money thing, then you have a price... How much would Netflix have to pay you for you to consider? Can you elaborate on: It costs Netflix as little as possible and the ISP as much as possible. If your ISP isn't tall enough for Netflix, Akamai has a lower barrier of entry. Have you let Akamai give you a local cache? why or why not? Steven Tardy, maybe I'm missing/overlooking something... On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 8:22 PM, <na...@brettglass.com> wrote: > This is Brett Glass; I have been alerted to some of the responses to my > message (which was cross-posted by a third party) and have temporarily > joined the list to chime in. The following is my response to his message, > edited slightly to include some new information. > > Dave Temkin wrote: > > >First and foremost, we built our CDN, Open Connect, > > "Open Connect" is not, in fact, a CDN. Nor is it "peering." It is merely a > set > of policies for direct connection to ISPs, and for placing servers in ISPs' > facilities, that is as favorable as possible in every way to Netflix. It > costs > Netflix as little as possible and the ISP as much as possible. > > >with the intention to > >deploy it as widely as possible in order to save ISPs who are delivering > >our traffic money > > It does not, in fact, appear to save ISPs money. Note that Comcast > asked for, and was given, additional payments even after it did all of > the things that are part of Netflix' "Open Connect" program. Netflix, > exercising inappropriate market power, has not offered smaller ISPs such > as my own the same amount per customer. In fact, it has offered us no > money at all -- even though our costs per Netflix customer are higher. > Netflix thus discriminates against and threatens smaller ISPs, and by > doing so, harms broadband competition. > > >and improve our mutual customer experience. This goes for > >ISPs large and small, domestic and international, big endian and little > >endian. We've never demanded payment from an ISP nor have we ever charged > >for an Open Connect Appliance. > > The power and bandwidth consumed by an "Open Connect Appliance" (which is > really just a hosted Netflix server) are a substantial expense for any ISP. > Especially because the server is not a cache; it is stocked with content > whether it is used or not and therefore wastes bandwidth on content and > formats that will never be used even once. > > >When we first launched almost three years ago, we set a lower boundary for > >receiving a Netflix Open Connect Appliance (which are always free) at > >5Gbps. Since then we've softened that limit to 3.5Gbps due to efficiencies > >of how we pre-load our appliances (more on that below). > > Most small ISPs (the average in the US, in fact) have 1,000 to 2,000 > accounts. > If every one of those streams at 1 Mbps at the same time, which is highly > unlikely, this still does not reach 3.5 Gbps. Therefore, most ISPs are > excluded > simply by this requirement if not by others (such as the requirement that > the > ISP alone pay for a dedicated connection to one of Netflix' relatively few > "peering points"). > > >We explicitly call our "cache" an Appliance because it's not a demand > >driven transparent or flow-through cache like the Akamai or Google caches. > >We do this because we know what's going to be popular the next day or even > >week and push a manifest to the Appliance to tell it what to download > >(usually in the middle of the night, but this is configurable by the ISP). > > What Netflix does not say here is that (a) it can only somewhat predict > what > will be in demand or go "viral;" (b) it wastes bandwidth by sending > multiple > copies of each video to its server in different formats, rather than > transcoding locally or saving bandwidth on lesser used formats via caching; > and (c) its server consumes large amounts of energy and bandwidth. A cache > can be much more efficient and can be owned and managed by the ISP. > > >The benefit of this architecture is that a single Appliance can get 70+% > >offload on a network, and three appliances clustered together can get 90+% > >offload, while consuming approximately 500 watts of power, using 4U of > rack > >space, and serving 14Gbps per appliance. > > To put this in perspective: LARIAT builds its own caches which consume > as little as 20 watts and can saturate a 10 Gbps Ethernet port. The > Netflix servers are large, bloated power hogs compared to a well designed > cache. > > >The downside of this architecture > >is that it requires significant bandwidth to fill; in some ISPs cases > >significantly more than they consume at peak viewing time. This is why our > >solution may not work well for some small ISPs and we instead suggest > >peering, which has 100% offload. > > Because it requires expensive bandwidth that's dedicated solely to Netflix, > "peering" (as Netflix calls it; it's really just a dedicated link) has 0%, > not 100%, offload. The ISP is paying for all of the bandwidth, and it > cannot be used for anything else. > > >We've put a lot of effort into localizing our peering infrastructure > >worldwide. As you can see from this map (sorry for the image), we're in 49 > >locations around the world with the significant bulk of them in the US > >(blue pins = 1 location, red pins = >1 location in a metro) - more > detailed > >version at <http://goo.gl/eDHpHU>http://goo.gl/eDHpHU and in our > PeeringDB record ( > ><http://as2906.peeringdb.com>http://as2906.peeringdb.com) : > > Our ISP connects to the Internet in Cheyenne, Wyoming (a major Internet > "crossroads;" it's where I-80 meets I-25) and Denver, Colorado (which is, > if anyplace can make the claim, the "center" of the entire Internet). > > Netflix' small and relatively sparse network of "peering" points does not > include either of those locations. (I've noted, just today, that they have > only recently listed a presence at a private data center outside of Denver > in Englewood, Colorado -- not one of the major Denver exchanges, such as > 1850 Pearl, to which we're already connected at great expense.) To get to > it, > we would have to spend several thousand dollars per month on an expensive > connection, with no reimbursement of this expense from Netflix. > > If Netflix were a good citizen, it would (a) let ISPs cache content; (b) > pay them > equitably for direct connections (smaller and more remote ISPs have higher > costs > per customer and should get MORE per account than Comcast, rather than > receiving > nothing); and (c) work with ISPs to develop updated technology that makes > streaming > more efficient. Bandwidth is expensive, and unicast streaming without > caching is by > far the most inefficient conceivable way of delivering "fat" content to > the consumer. > > --Brett Glass > >
