Netflix Streaming, Scaling, & OpenConnect – November 28 (with link to videorecording)

Scott Long, Netflix Wednesday, November 28, 4:00 – 6:00 PM 1311 EECS See the recording > Sponsored by the Office of Research Cyberinfrastructure (ORCI) Snacks will be provided. Abstract: Netflix streams over a billion hours of movies and television shows world-wide every month, representing 33% of North America’s prime-time internet traffic.  To efficiently and cost-effectively move this massive amount of data, Netflix developed the OpenConnect Appliance, a FreeBSD-based media streaming and caching device that forms the building block of our own content delivery network. This talk will discuss the OpenConnect Appliance hardware and software, challenges faced in balancing rapid growth with solid engineering, and the importance of open source software in modern companies. This talk should be of interest to people interested in operating systems, system-level hardware design, and large and small-scale networks. In addition, the goal is to both give the audience an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities that await them in the commercial world, and to stress the importance of a solid CS/CSE/EE education. Bio: Scott Long is a software engineer with 13 years of experience in the storage and online content industries.  Ever since attending the University of Michigan in the early 1990’s, he has been avid user and advocate of open source software, and has been a member of the FreeBSD development community since 2000.  After spending 5 years leading the OS development team at Yahoo, Scott moved to Netflix in 2012 to help build the world’s largest content delivery network.  Scott graduated from Metropolitan State University of Denver with a Bachelor of Science in Aviation Operations and spent a short time in 2011 as a commercial airline pilot.