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Netflix — Simple#

Problem statement (interviewer prompt)

Design Netflix: catalogue browse + per-row personalised recommendations, playback with ABR + DRM, multi-region availability, A/B testing of art and rankers, and offline downloads. Cover Open Connect (their own CDN) and 250M+ subscribers.

flowchart LR
  V([Viewer])
  PLAY[Playback API]
  REC([Recommendation])
  META[(Catalog / Metadata)]
  OC[Open Connect Appliance<br/>inside ISP]
  ORIG[(Origin Cloud Storage)]
  V --> REC --> META
  V --> PLAY --> OC
  OC -. miss .-> ORIG

    classDef client fill:#dbeafe,stroke:#1e40af,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef edge fill:#cffafe,stroke:#0e7490,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef service fill:#fef3c7,stroke:#92400e,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef datastore fill:#fee2e2,stroke:#991b1b,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef cache fill:#fed7aa,stroke:#9a3412,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef queue fill:#ede9fe,stroke:#5b21b6,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef compute fill:#d1fae5,stroke:#065f46,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef storage fill:#e5e7eb,stroke:#374151,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef external fill:#fce7f3,stroke:#9d174d,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef obs fill:#f3e8ff,stroke:#6b21a8,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    class V client;
    class PLAY,OC service;
    class META,ORIG datastore;
    class REC compute;