SDE Path

Netflix Concurrency & Egress

Medium

Netflix has 200 million subscribers. Assume 20% are streaming at any moment (held constant all day, for simplicity), at an average adaptive bitrate of 4 Mbps.

Use: 1 day = 86,400 sec ≈ 10^5 sec. Powers of 10: 1 KB = 10^3 B, 1 MB = 10^6 B, 1 GB = 10^9 B, 1 TB = 10^12 B, 1 PB = 10^15 B. Bandwidth: 1 Mbps = 10^6 bits/sec, 1 Gbps = 10^9 bits/sec, 1 Tbps = 10^12 bits/sec, 8 bits = 1 byte.

Compute concurrent streams, sustained egress, and total bytes served per day.

Back-of-envelope counts: any answer within ±30% of the target is correct, just like a real interview. Suffixes like k, M, B work.