Netflix’s Grand, Daring, Maybe Crazy Plan to Conquer the World | WIRED

Planetary-scale content distribution

"These so-called Open Connect appliances serve a simple purpose: To keep Netflix from clogging up the Internet. In North America alone, Netflix is singlehandedly responsible for 37 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak hours. The service as a whole streams 125 million hours of content every single day. Without relieving as many pressure points as possible, things could get ugly, fast.

The total capacity of the Internet’s country-to-country backbone is 35TB per second, says Ken Florance, Netflix’s VP of content delivery. “Our peak traffic is more than that … . Our scale is actually larger than the international capacity of the Internet.” Netflix doesn’t literally break the Internet because the vast majority of its traffic is delivered locally, via Open Connect, rather than across the transoceanic cables that connect the Internet between continents."

Netflix’s Grand, Daring, Maybe Crazy Plan to Conquer the World | WIRED