Netflix System Design
How Netflix streams video worldwide: a transcoding pipeline, its own CDN (Open Connect), personalised recommendations and playback services. A popular system design interview topic.
How it flows
- Client Apps → DNS Routing (resolve)
- DNS Routing → API Gateway
- API Gateway → Auth Service
- API Gateway → Video Upload
- Video Upload → Encode Queue
- Encode Queue → Video Encoder
- Video Encoder → Video Blob Store (store chunks)
- Video Blob Store → Open Connect Server
- Open Connect Server → CDN Edge Nodes
- API Gateway → Playback Service
- Playback Service → CDN Edge Nodes (stream video)
- Playback Service → User Profiles
- Auth Service → User Profiles
- User Profiles → Profile Cache
- Profile Cache → User Database
- User Profiles → Rec Engine
- Rec Engine → ML Rec Model
- Client Apps → Kafka Events
- Kafka Events → Analytics Pipeline
- Analytics Pipeline → ML Rec Model
Components
Video Upload · Encode Queue · Video Encoder · Video Blob Store · CDN Edge Nodes · Open Connect Server · ML Rec Model · Rec Engine · Profile Cache · User Database · Client Apps · DNS Routing · API Gateway · Playback Service · User Profiles · Auth Service · Analytics Pipeline · Kafka Events