Open Connect now serves ~90% of Netflix traffic locally using S3 origins and predictive edge caching
- Netflix’s Open Connect network serves most viewing from servers placed inside or near internet service providers, while finished titles are staged in Amazon S3 and pushed outward before viewers hit play. - Netflix has said close to 90% of its traffic is delivered over direct connections to residential internet providers, and that proactive caching moves most updates during off-peak “fill” windows. - The setup cuts long-haul transit and buffering by keeping video near viewers, a model Netflix has refined since launching Open Connect in 2011. (openconnect.netflix.com)
A content delivery network is a chain of local warehouses for video. Netflix’s version, Open Connect, works by putting copies of shows and movies close to viewers instead of pulling every stream from a distant origin. (openconnect.netflix.com) Netflix says Open Connect began in 2011 as streaming scale surged and internet providers needed a more direct way to handle Netflix traffic. The company built purpose-made cache servers called Open Connect Appliances, or OCAs, and placed them at internet exchange points and inside qualifying internet service providers. (openconnect.netflix.com 1) (openconnect.netflix.com 2) The cloud piece sits upstream. Netflix said in 2016 that finished titles, subtitles, and bitrate variants are repackaged and deployed to Amazon Simple Storage Service, or S3, before Open Connect systems distribute them to cache servers. (netflixtechblog.com) That means S3 is not the box streaming most viewers their next episode. It is the staging area where ready-to-release assets wait before Netflix pushes them to thousands of Open Connect servers around the world. (netflixtechblog.com) Netflix’s key trick is predictive caching, which is closer to stocking shelves overnight than fetching on demand. The company said it can predict with high accuracy what members will watch and when, then use off-peak bandwidth to pre-position most updates during scheduled “fill” windows. (netflixtechblog.com) Netflix later described the same goal in more formal terms as “content delivery efficiency,” or how much traffic gets served from local Open Connect servers instead of becoming a cache miss. A July 2, 2025 engineering post said the company logs historical streaming behavior and models future trends to optimize long-term caching efficiency. (netflixtechblog.com) The “about 90% locally” figure is old, but it is real. Netflix said in a March 17, 2016 post that close to 90% of its traffic was delivered over direct connections between Open Connect and residential internet providers, usually at the regional interconnection point closest to the viewer. (marketscreener.com) Netflix’s current Open Connect site does not repeat that exact 90% number, but it says the company now partners with more than 1,000 internet service providers to localize substantial amounts of traffic. Its deployment guide was updated on April 22, 2026. (openconnect.netflix.com 1) (openconnect.netflix.com 2) Inside each local cluster, Netflix does not store every title everywhere. Engineers said in 2017 that they rank content by popularity, keep only the most popular titles on smaller edge clusters, and replicate hot files across multiple servers so a single hit show does not overload one machine. (netflixtechblog.com 1) (netflixtechblog.com 2) So the clean version of the story is this: AWS stores and powers major parts of Netflix’s backend, S3 holds release-ready assets upstream, and Open Connect does the last-mile heavy lifting by serving video from local caches whenever it can. (aws.amazon.com) (netflixtechblog.com) (openconnect.netflix.com) That is why the network can shrink latency and backbone traffic at the same time. The closer the file is to the viewer before playback starts, the less the wider internet has to do once the stream begins. (openconnect.netflix.com) (netflixtechblog.com)
