Eli5: what happens on the server when one selects to watch a movie on Netflix and how the architecture allows 500k other people to watch the same movie almost concurrently?

Question

Eli5: what happens on the server when one selects to watch a movie on Netflix and how the architecture allows 500k other people to watch the same movie almost concurrently?

In: Technology

Answer 1

They have 1k different content endpoint servers so that each only has to handle 500 users, which almost any silly server with a bunch of disk space could do. And those endpoints are closer (in network-distance) to the user, ideally.