Getting stuck in traffic is one of the most frustrating experiences for drivers around the world. Everyone slows to a crawl, sometimes for a minor issue or sometimes for no reason at all. As…

The Netflix Tech Blog provides insights into the engineering practices, architecture, and innovations behind the Netflix streaming platform. Developers can learn about Netflix's microservices architecture, data infrastructure, and machine learning algorithms, as well as explore topics such as video encoding, content delivery, and personalization algorithms used in the Netflix service.

Netflix TechBlog

Netflix has introduced priority-based progressive load shedding. While the lower priority requests are throttled, the playback experience remains uninterrupted. The animation below shows the behavior of the Netflix viewer experience when the backend is throttling traffic based on priority. The higher priority requests will get preferential treatment, while the lowerpriority requests will not.

Keeping Netflix Reliable Using Prioritized Load Shedding

Finding the best place to throttle traffic

Introducing priority-based progressive load shedding

Validating which requests are right for the job

Continually ensuring those requests are still right for the job