[alex-mohr]

If Netflix were working correctly and could handle the load, you'd absolutely be correct.

But it does seem the capacity of a hybrid system of Netflix servers plus P2P would be strictly greater than either alone? It's not an XOR.

And note that in this case of "live" streaming, it still has a few seconds of buffer, which gives a bandwidth-delay product of a few MB. That's plenty to have non-stale blocks and do torrent-style sharing.

[nemothekid]

If switching to a peer causes increased buffering (which it will, because you still have to wait for the peer to download from Netflix) then you will still have the original problem Netflix is suffering from.

If the solution to users complaining about buffering is to build a system with more inherent buffering then you are back at square one.

I think it’s might be helpful to look at netlfix’s current system as already a distributed video delivery system in which they control the best seeds. Adding more seeds may help, but if Netflix is underprovisioned from the start you will have users who cannot access the streams