Netflix Open Connect Division Staff - 20 SW, 10 Network, & 10 Operations

Arstechnica posts on a presentation by Netflix’s David Fullagar director of content delivery architecture.

There are cool details like the staff.

The network team

Netflix’s Open Connect division has about 40 people, Fullagar said. About 20 are software engineers who either build software for Netflix servers or work on the company's management software, which runs on Amazon’s cloud network and performs functions such as load balancing. Another 10 Open Connect employees are network architects, and another 10 are in operations.

There are two types of hardware used.

Netflix stores video on two types of boxes that it designed, one that’s heavy on HDDs and another that’s all SSDs. Netflix built them in part because it couldn’t find the right mix of compute and storage capabilities in products from hardware vendors.

The HDD unit is a 4U-sized chassis that holds 216TB on 36 drives of 6TB each. It has 64GB RAM, a 10 Gigabit NIC, and some SSD for frequently accessed content.

The smaller, 1U, SSD-only unit contains 14 drives of a terabyte each, 256GB of RAM and a 40 Gigabit NIC. About 75 percent of the cost of both the HDD and SSD boxes is taken up by storage. Each unit uses Intel CPUs.

How many are there?

Netflix stores video on two types of boxes that it designed, one that’s heavy on HDDs and another that’s all SSDs. Netflix built them in part because it couldn’t find the right mix of compute and storage capabilities in products from hardware vendors.

The HDD unit is a 4U-sized chassis that holds 216TB on 36 drives of 6TB each. It has 64GB RAM, a 10 Gigabit NIC, and some SSD for frequently accessed content.

The smaller, 1U, SSD-only unit contains 14 drives of a terabyte each, 256GB of RAM and a 40 Gigabit NIC. About 75 percent of the cost of both the HDD and SSD boxes is taken up by storage. Each unit uses Intel CPUs.

If you didn’t make it to the NY event, it looks like the presentation in repeated for the Uptime Symposium attendees.

Designing Netflix's Content Delivery System

Presenter: David Fullagar, Director of Content Delivery Architecture, Netflix Tuesday, May 20, 2014 2:35 - 3:05 p.m. The way people consume video-based content has changed dramatically over recent years. At the forefront of this evolution is Netflix, today's undisputed video-streaming service leader. Due to the personalization of on-demand video delivery service, no two subscribers watch the same content at exactly the same time. Now bits and bytes of this digital content must be ready for delivery on-demand to more than 44 million Netflix customers, placing incredible pressure on the content delivery infrastructure. To tackle this challenge, David Fullagar, Director of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix and his team, have custom designed the content delivery network (CDN)—Open Connect. During this presentation, Mr. Fullagar will share the Open Connect hardware design and the open source software components of the server that support these massive streaming demands. These cost-efficient designs are suitable for any high-volume provider of large media files to enable faster, cheaper Internet for all.

How fast is your Connection to Netflix?

There is a lot of news on Comcast Netflix agreement that speeds up streaming video.  ArsTechnica writes on how the speed has increased after the connection agreement.

After Netflix pays Comcast, speeds improve 65%

When Netflix and Comcast customers both pay Comcast, the traffic flows smoothly.

by Jon Brodkin - Apr 14 2014, 11:22am PDT

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Netflix's decision to pay Comcast for a direct connection to the Comcast network has resulted in significantly better video streaming performance for customers of the nation's largest broadband provider.

Netflix has bemoaned the payment, asking the government to prevent Comcast from demanding such interconnection "tolls."

Netflix has posted the latest performance results for Mar 2014.

Curious I decided to see how fast my connections are to Netflix.  You can watch a Netflix movie and embedded in your stream is the speed of connection.

Netflix has released a new “test” video that will then report on how fast and at what quality you are getting Netflix content.

Click here to launch

The tool streams a test video and displays the data up in the top corner.

I tried the movie on my MacBook Retina.  Max Resolution is 1280x720 at 3mbps. 

Went to AppleTv and FireTV and both of their speeds were 5.8mbps at 1920x1080.  I can get the higher speeds because I upgraded my home network to Business Comcast so no usage caps and much higher speed streams. 

Doesn’t it seem kind of sad that you spend all the money on a nice TV and if you watch Netflix and many other streaming services over your home ISP you are lucky to get 720p.  Heck until I switched off of Home Comcast Internet I was like the rest of you stuck at 480p.

Upgraded from Residential to Business Internet Access on Comcast, 5 days so much better after upgrade

I thought my Internet connection was OK.  I had decent speeds 50mbps down 10 up.  What I found irritating though was not as good a connections through VOIP, Video Conferencing, Microcell.  Netflix was OK.

I have a semi-retired Microsoft friend who works from home like I do and he swears by his Business Comcast Internet connection.  Only recently I had the option of adding Business Comcast Internet at home.  I finally decided to give it a try and see if it works, worse case no difference I switch.

Getting switched was less than 1/2 hour.  I decided to get a new Cable Modem while I was at it.  I already had a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, but decided given it was 4 years old I’d rather upgrade now, and have one less thing to worry about in the upgrade.

Speedtest is the same 50 down and 10 up and the cost is about $40 more a month.  Is it worth it?

1) Skype Video calls were improved to HD quality.  Also started using Fuze Box and the HD quality was consistent.

2) VOIP and Microcell call quality appears more consistent.

3) Netflix now on playing in HD quality on all devices - AppleTV, Samsung TV, iPad, and Mac.

4) Streaming from iTunes starts faster, including on AppleTV.  Before I would wait 5-10 seconds for a trailer to start.  Now the wait is 1-2 seconds.

5) Youtube video starts sooner.

So is it worth another $40 a month.  Given I use the Internet every day, work from home, and my wife does as well.  I would say I probably get $40 almost every day due to not waiting and higher quality streaming services, but of course I wouldn’t pay that kind of money.

Another intangible that I don’t use, but nice to have is Business Comcast Internet is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   So when I have problems with Internet access I don’t wait like my neighbors.  I get a truck rolling to my house within 24 hours if there is a problem requiring a technician.

Here is a Arstechnica article on a writer who switched to Business Comcast Internet.

Why I pay extra for “business-class” broadband at home

No data caps, no blocked ports, and better support are pretty darn compelling.

by Lee Hutchinson - Oct 15 2012, 5:00am PDT

Develop Future Communication Systems in AWS, Popular and Disruptive

Network Function Virtualization is a hot topic with Mobile World Congress this week.

Given the move to NFV is about creating a Cloud to service networking needs, one of the things you can do is run an IP Multimedia Subsystem in AWS using the Clearwater project.

The standard Clearwater distribution is designed for fast deployment on Amazon Web Services.  You can stand up a large-scale Clearwater deployment on AWS in a couple of hours using the scripts included in the distribution.  Once you’re comfortable with how Clearwater works on AWS, you can adapt it for your own private cloud environment – or you could offer production services from a Clearwater deployment on AWS.

...

Clearwater is IMS in the Cloud.  IMS (the IP Multimedia Subsystem) is the standards-based architecture that has been adopted by most large telcos as the basis of their IP-based voice, video and messaging services, replacing legacy circuit-switched systems and previous generation VoIP systems based on softswitching.  Clearwater follows IMS architectural principles and supports all of the key standardized interfaces expected of an IMS core network.  But unlike traditional implementations of IMS, Clearwater was designed from the ground up for the Cloud.  By incorporating design patterns and open source software components that have been proven in many global Web applications, Clearwater achieves an unprecedented combination of massive scalability and exceptional cost-effectiveness. Project Clearwater is sponsored by Metaswitch Networks.

There is another Cloud NFV effort here.

And others are ready with their own NFV open frameworks.

Broadcom Announces Open Network Function Virtualization Platform

Helps Accelerate Deployment of Applications and Cost Benefits of NFV

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today announced its Open Network Function Virtualization (NFV) platform. This platform is designed to accelerate NFV adoption by allowing implementation of applications across multiple system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor solutions based on diverse Instruction Set Architectures (ISA). Broadcom will showcase its mobile innovations at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 24 - 27.  For more news, visitBroadcom's Newsroom. 

...

Dell Supports Telecommunications Industry Transformation With Industry Partnerships, Leadership in Network Functions Virtualization, New Data Center Offerings, and Customer Success

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Date : 2/24/2014

Spain

• Dell extends collaboration with Red Hat to co-engineer OpenStack-based Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solutions specifically for the telecommunications industry and teams with Calsoft Labs to deliver NFV and SDN solutions to telecom operators worldwide
• Dell takes leadership role in CloudNFV consortium to demonstrate and implement an open, cloud-based NFV model

AT&T announces its Embracing Cloud Principles for its Network

AT&T announced its User-Defined Network Cloud which is kind of puzzling.  So, the current network is a non-user defined specialized equipment environment where people (mostly men) picked their favorite equipment in self serving perspectives thinking of their jobs and users should trust these people to be the experience they wanted? This was the old way, but technology is moving too fast, and users expectations are growing.  Here is a graphic that illustrates the change AT&T is making.

NFV aims to address these problems by evolving standard IT virtualization technology to consolidate
many network equipment types onto industry standard high volume servers, switches and storage that
can be located in data centers, network PoPs or on customer premises. As shown in Figure 2, this
involves the implementation of network functions in software, called VNFs, that can run on a range of
general purpose hardware, and that can be moved to, or instantiated in, various locations in the
network as required, without the need for installation of new equipment.

The document that has this graphic is here.

Here is another graphic that shows the change.

Here is the blog post from AT&T’s John Donovan.  I think if John had added these simple graphics to his blog post it would have communicated much more clearly what AT&T is doing.

I found this information thanks to GigaOm’s Kevin Fitchard post.

Software is eating the mobile network, too, as AT&T begins its journey into the cloud

by Kevin Fitchard

6 HOURS AGO

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photo: Gigaom Illustration

SUMMARY:

AT&T is taking the first steps toward transforming its network into a data center. It’s not touching the cellular network — at least not yet — but it will start virtualizing its mobile core and application infrastructure.