Unreeling Netflix: Understanding and Improving Multi-CDN Movie D...

Netflix is the leading provider of on-demand Internet video streaming in the US and Canada, accounting for 29.7% of the peak downstream traffic in US. Understanding the Netflix architecture and its performance can shed light on how to best optimize its design as well as on the design of similar on-demand streaming services. In this paper, we perform a measurement study of Netflix to uncover its architecture and service strategy. We find that Netflix employs a blend of data centers and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for content distribution. We also perform active measurements of the three CDNs employed by Netflix to quantify the video delivery bandwidth available to users across the US. Finally, as improvements to Netflix’s current CDN assignment strategy, we propose a measurement-based adaptive CDN selection strategy and a multiple-CDN-based video delivery strategy, and demonstrate their potentials in significantly increasing user’s average bandwidth.