[jroper]

I don't think Netflix puts their content on CDNs. A prerequisite for Netflix entering a country is whether AWS has a datacenter in that country (or for smaller countries, near that country). For example, Netflix only offered services in Australia when AWS opened an Australian datacenter. If Netflix were distributing their content via CDNs, then it wouldn't matter so much where AWS datacenters are, it would only matter where the CDN edge nodes were. I suspect that Netflix has far too much content to host it economically on a CDN.

[m11r]

The reason Netflix would potentially wait for a proximate AWS datacenter is because all of their apps, backend services, and interface UIs are served from EC2 instances; all of the actual content delivery is in fact handled by their FreeBSD-based OpenConnect appliances. In other words, no, Netflix doesn't put their content on other, third-party CDNs like Cloudfront, Fastly, Limelight Networks, etc., but they do absolutely serve it all from their own, custom-built CDN/hardware.

[1]: https://openconnect.netflix.com/ [2]: https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/netflix_freebsd/ [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11129627 [4]: https://www.slideshare.net/aspyker/container-world-2018 [etc.]