Netflix’s Open Connect content delivery network (CDN) delivers 100% of its video traffic, which stands at more than 125 million hours of viewing per day, according to the company.
In a blog post about how Netflix works with internet service providers around the world, the subscription video-on-demand firm said that globally close to 90% of its traffic is delivered via direct connections between Open Connect and the residential ISPs its members use to get on the web.
“Most of these connections are localised to the regional point of interconnection that’s geographically closest to the member who’s watching,” said Ken Florance, Netflix’s vice president, content delivery.
“Because connections to the Netflix Open Connect network are always free and our traffic delivery is highly localised, thousands of ISPs around the world enthusiastically participate.”
Netflix said it gives qualifying ISPs the same Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) that it uses in its internet interconnection locations and that, once installed in an ISP’s data center, almost all Netflix content is served from the local OCAs rather than ‘upstream’ from the internet.
“Many ISPs take advantage of this option, in addition to local network interconnection, because it reduces the amount of capacity they need to build to the rest of the internet since Netflix is no longer a significant factor in that capacity. This has the dual benefit of reducing the ISP’s cost of operation and ensuring the best possible Netflix experience for their subscribers,” said Florance.
Netflix claims to now have Open Connect Appliances in close to 1,000 separate locations around the world – in big cities like New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, as well as more remote locations like Greenland in the north and Puerto Montt, Chile in the south.
“ISPs have even placed OCAs in Macapá and Manaus in the Amazon rainforest — on every continent, except Antarctica and on many islands such as Jamaica, Malta, Guam, and Okinawa,” said Florance.
“As our service continues to grow in all of the new global locations we’re reaching, so will our Netflix Open Connect footprint, as ISPs take advantage of the costs savings available to them by participating in our Netflix Open Connect program. That means Netflix quality in places like India, the Middle East, Africa and Asia will continue to see improvements.”
Netflix Open Connect was originally developed in 2011 and announced a year later as a response to the “ever-increasing scale of Netflix streaming“.
