Netflix’s many-pronged plan to eliminate video playback problems

For all of Netflix’s complaints about Internet service providers harming video performance, one of the company’s top technology experts is confident that the streaming company can solve most of its customers’ problems. }

The best-known parts of Open Connect are probably the storage boxes that Internet service providers can take into their own networks to bring content closer to consumers. Internet service providers (ISPs) can also peer with Netflix, exchanging traffic directly without hosting Netflix equipment.

But these aren’t the only ways Netflix’s Open Connect technology can deliver good quality. Netflix used to use third-party CDNs such as Akamai, but it has moved most of its traffic over to Open Connect in the past couple of years.

Outside the US, 100 percent of Netflix traffic is distributed using Open Connect equipment. The percentage is in the “high 90s” in the US, with plans to hit 100 percent this summer. Even if the storage boxes aren’t inside an ISP’s network, they’re not too far away. They could even be in the same data centers, the Internet exchange points where Netflix transit providers connect to ISPs.