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Comment by miyuru | Hacker News Reader

For streaming, google have caches in like every ISP network. Also majority of the people watches the latest and same type of content that is mainly served from the homepage, which is easier to cache and serve.

If you have the ipvfoo extension, you can see it in action. (its easier to see with IPv6)

https://github.com/pmarks-net/ipvfoo

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I wonder if that's part of the reason for their algorithms to push the same videos to everyone, they're already cached at the edge so it costs them nothing?

I would imagine it's an unintended side effect of the "people recently watched this so it's relevant" part of the algorithm.

More popular works are more likely to be enjoyable to more people. There is no really objective measure of quality for any creative work, and taste doesn't scale, so publishers bias for popularity as it's one of the few things they can understand.

> taste doesn't scale

The motto of so many social networks. Even if they don't know it.

The majority will enjoy and like whatever is pushed on them. Decades of radio and TV should be enough evidence for this. Music or video is not popular because people like it, but because somebody decided to make it popular by pushing it on people.

> taste doesn't scale

Wow, I’m going to put this on a wall.

I would imagine that's too insignificant to factor into that particular calculation.

They’re cached because they’re popular, not popular because they’re cached .

This is the correct answer. Caches in local PoPs https://cloud.google.com/cdn/docs/locations

They even have a map.

https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure#edge-nodes

It also says "Static content that's very popular with the local host's user base, including YouTube and Google Play, is temporarily cached on edge nodes. Google's traffic management systems direct user requests to an edge node that provides the best experience."

Although note the map is only city addresses. For example the "London" pin is on the notional point where "London" is, ie Charing Cross. There is no giant network interchange at Charing Cross, it's just a convenient place co-ordinate for "London".

There is a big difference between 'caches in ISP networks' and 'caches in public datacenters adjacent to local exchange points'. The first implies preferential treatment from ISPs, the second is commodity available to everybody. Your link implies these local PoPs are more likely the second case.

Yes. This is the secret to Netflix's success too. They don't need a CDN, the ISPs do that for them. (Net neutrality what?)

they run their own cdn.

it's arguable cheaper than buying but then again it's also the core business and outsourcing put's the whole operation in danger

What? Netflix has their own cdn, they talk about it often.

My car runs on gas. I don't own my own network of gas stations, but I still have a gas tank that keeps me going.

>What is Netflix Open Connect? Open Connect is the name of the global network that is responsible for delivering Netflix TV shows and movies to our members world-wide. This type of network is typically referred to as a “Content Delivery Network” or “CDN” because its job is to deliver internet-based content (via HTTP/HTTPS) efficiently by bringing the content that people watch close to where they’re watching it. The Open Connect network shares some characteristics with other CDNs, but also has some important differences.

What exactly do you think a CDN is?

Okay I'll answer your low-effort question in case a lot of people, like you, think they know what a CDN is but don't.

A CDN is when you set up servers in datacenters around the country and distribute content to them so that your content is closer to your users.

What Netflix did is create guidelines for ISPs that want to cache Netflix content at the edge. So Netflix isn't running a CDN themselves, the ISP acts as a CDN.

Seems like you're talking about OpenConnect. In that, Netflix ships an OpenConnect Appliance (a server for sending out Netflix video) to an ISP that meets the minimum requirements and agrees to set up networking to the OCA in a certain way.

> A CDN is when you set up servers in datacenters around the country and distribute content to them so that your content is closer to your users.

Yes, exacly - the server in the Netflix case is called an OCA, and is set up in datacenters all around the country - in this case they are owned by the ISP rather than being a 3rd party data center where the ISP has a fiber and the CDN rents space. Here's the thing though.... Akamai, Cloudflare, and Fastly all do the same as Netflix too. The ISP wins because it saves transit, the CDN wins because it doesn't need to rent dc space, and customers of both win because the content is delivered faster to the people using that ISP.

Or maybe you're talking about the peering guidelines? Hate to break it to you, every CDN is happy to peer with just about anyone with a mutual POP - keeping the transit bill lower is always a win.

Yes, that's what I was talking about. As a small competitor of Netflix, ISPs will laugh me out of the room if I suggest they install one (let alone many) servers in their buildings.

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