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

Some grey area streaming programs out there have the ability to leverage some of the internets backbone routers to multicast a stream. Basically one stream in, two come out.