Netflix recently announced that it will provide its video streaming services through the company’s own content delivery network (CDN). The network of in-house servers currently handle 5 percent of Netflix streaming traffic.
“Called Open Connect, the service will help Netflix cut the umbilical cord to commercial CDN providers like Limelight and Level 3 and will bring it closer to the cable and telco ISPs ultimately responsible for delivering its movies and TV shows,” reports GigaOM.
Open Connect will offer ISPs the option of connecting directly to Netflix or caching content on their own servers. The company hopes to coax ISPs to use its CDN by waiving Internet exchange fees and sharing open source designs for server hardware and software.
“The world’s other major Internet video provider, YouTube, has long had its own content delivery network,” explains the Netflix blog. “Given our size and growth, it now makes economic sense for Netflix to have one as well. We’ll continue to work with our commercial CDN partners for the next few years, but eventually most of our data will be served by Open Connect.”
GigaOM notes that some ISPs have their own CDNs and charge content providers to cache content, while others “actually earn a paycheck from commercial CDN providers to host content servers on their networks. With the Open Connect, those revenue streams would go away. But if ISPs were to take Open Connect into their networks they could save considerably on network transport costs by moving the source of Netflix’s enormous traffic flow closer to their customers.”
Netflix recently announced that it will provide its video streaming services through the company’s own content delivery network (CDN). The network of in-house servers currently handle 5 percent of Netflix streaming traffic.
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