I don't get why Netflix doesn't put enough logic in the client to deal with this kind of thing in some kind of graceful way.
Netflix, to me, is a big collection of links to stuff in CDNs (which, got a first approximation, never go down; Akamai is essentially unfadeable, highly resistant to all forms of outage because it's a trivial replication problem.)
I rarely if ever care about the recommendations engine, new content in the submission queue, etc.
Yes, there's an authentication problem, but this is also trivial to replicate, and it's fine if "is a valid subscriber" goes even a month out of date.
Essentially, even if AWS goes down completely, the Netflix client should be able to get a static list of movies and show them. Maybe that's my queue, maybe that's the top 10 per genre, whatever.
In times of degraded operation, show me something.
I know they have some degradation of service in their recommendations but I can't speak for the rest of the service. A coworker was telling me that each recommendation on your main netflix screen is provided by a different service. So lets say its suppose to be feeding me scifi recommendations. If the scifi service is down, then it will just remove it from the main screen and I will get a different recommendation category until its back up.
Netflix, to me, is a big collection of links to stuff in CDNs (which, got a first approximation, never go down; Akamai is essentially unfadeable, highly resistant to all forms of outage because it's a trivial replication problem.)
I rarely if ever care about the recommendations engine, new content in the submission queue, etc.
Yes, there's an authentication problem, but this is also trivial to replicate, and it's fine if "is a valid subscriber" goes even a month out of date.
Essentially, even if AWS goes down completely, the Netflix client should be able to get a static list of movies and show them. Maybe that's my queue, maybe that's the top 10 per genre, whatever.
In times of degraded operation, show me something.