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    Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

    (www.sportingnews.com)
    492 points storf45 | 14 comments | 16 Nov 24 03:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.825s | source | bottom
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    freditup ◴[16 Nov 24 03:57 UTC] No.42154036[source]▶
    I wonder if there will be any long term reputational repercussions for Netflix because of this. Amongst SWEs, Netflix is known for hiring the best people and their streaming service normally seems very solid. Other streaming services have definitely caught up a bit and are much more reliable then in the early days, but my impression still has always been that Netflix is a step above the rest technically.

    This sure doesn't help with that impression, and it hasn't just been a momentary glitch but hours of instability. And the Netflix status page saying "Netflix is up! We are not currently experiencing an interruption to our streaming service." doesn't help either...

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    ocdtrekkie ◴[16 Nov 24 04:03 UTC] No.42154059[source]▶
    So the issue is that Netflix gets its performance from colocating caches of movies in ISP datacenters, and a live broadcast doesn't work with that. It's not just about the sheer numbers of viewers, it's that a live model totally undermines their entire infrastructure advantage.

    See: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

    replies(9): >>42154072 #>>42154074 #>>42154076 #>>42154079 #>>42154138 #>>42154193 #>>42154199 #>>42154343 #>>42161993 #
    sgarland ◴[16 Nov 24 04:08 UTC] No.42154079[source]▶
    I wonder how effective it would be to cache live events with a delay. Write to the tail, read from the head.
    replies(2): >>42154189 #>>42154204 #
    1. thefreeman ◴[16 Nov 24 04:23 UTC] No.42154189[source]▶
    that’s totally unacceptable for live sports which people are able to bet on
    replies(5): >>42154257 #>>42154342 #>>42154423 #>>42154645 #>>42154753 #
    2. dullcrisp ◴[16 Nov 24 04:31 UTC] No.42154257[source]▶
    Live sports require microwave relays for high frequency sports bets
    3. rk06 ◴[16 Nov 24 04:45 UTC] No.42154342[source]▶
    Why should they catering to such an audience in first place?

    I think this could be one of upsells that Netflix could use.

    Premium: get no delay

    Normal users: get cache and delay

    replies(1): >>42154450 #
    4. Brybry ◴[16 Nov 24 04:59 UTC] No.42154423[source]▶
    This is kind of silly because the delay between actual event happening to showing up on OTA TV or cable TV to showing up on satellite TV can already be tens of seconds.
    replies(1): >>42155183 #
    5. ctvo ◴[16 Nov 24 05:06 UTC] No.42154450[source]▶
    Or, hear me out here, it's a wild concept, just work.

    You know, like every other broadcaster, streaming platform, and company that does live content has been able to do.

    Acting like this is a novel, hard problem that needs to be solved and we need to "upsell" it in tiers because Netflix is incompetent and live broadcasting hasn't been around for 80+ years is so fucking stupid.

    replies(1): >>42154647 #
    6. kortilla ◴[16 Nov 24 05:52 UTC] No.42154645[source]▶
    I have bad news for you. This is how it works already for “live” sports
    replies(2): >>42155103 #>>42158227 #
    7. kortilla ◴[16 Nov 24 05:53 UTC] No.42154647{3}[source]▶
    Every other live platform has a delay of multiple seconds
    8. squeaky-clean ◴[16 Nov 24 06:12 UTC] No.42154753[source]▶
    I don't bet so I have no clue, but why is that? Are people able to place bets in the middle of the match or something? I would have assumed bets get locked in when the fight starts
    replies(2): >>42154799 #>>42155179 #
    9. umanwizard ◴[16 Nov 24 06:23 UTC] No.42154799[source]▶
    Idk about traditional sports books but on Polymarket you can certainly continue betting at any time until the market resolves.
    replies(1): >>42154960 #
    10. pests ◴[16 Nov 24 07:03 UTC] No.42154960{3}[source]▶
    They end betting some minutes before the fight ends.

    I last saw Tyson at +500 while Jake was around -800 on DraftKings somewhere in the 6th round.

    11. YZF ◴[16 Nov 24 07:41 UTC] No.42155103[source]▶
    Yep. Having actually worked on this sort of stuff I can confirm.

    Your ISP doesn't have enough bandwidth to the Internet (generally speaking) for all users to get their feed directly from a central location. And that central location doesn't have enough bandwidth to serve all users even if the ISP could. That said, the delay can be pretty small, e.g. the first user to hit the cache goes upstream, the others basically get the stream as it comes in to the cache. This doesn't make things worse, it makes them better.

    12. JCharante ◴[16 Nov 24 08:06 UTC] No.42155179[source]▶
    a match has multiple rounds doesn't it? Seems logical to bet on individual rounds or events that can occur throughout the match.
    13. JCharante ◴[16 Nov 24 08:07 UTC] No.42155183[source]▶
    isn't this why people would listen via radio?
    14. jrpelkonen ◴[16 Nov 24 18:44 UTC] No.42158227[source]▶
    Correct. Here are some latency numbers from the last SuperBowl: https://www.phenixrts.com/resource/super-bowl-2024

    Even the best latency is dozens of seconds behind live action.