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On August 29, 1997 in Scotts Valley, Calif., Netflix entered the content game. In 1998, its DVD-by-mail service started and 10 years later came the inception of its streaming service. Within five years of offering streaming, Blockbuster and the Mom & Pop video store were forced out of the “video” business. It is quite fair to say Netflix led the transformation of how the world views video content, literally. As of the end of 2015, Netflix reported over 75 million subscribers worldwide and with that comes the demand for more efficient and high-performing networks.

Just ask Australia, in 2015 the Land Down Under received Netflix services and the network paid the price. Aussies claim Netflix is to blame for slower Internet speeds during peak viewing; not-for-profit IX Australia released some telling data that corroborates this claim. The member owned not-for-profit provides peering services and pairs content players with ISPs – touting member ISPs like Exetel, M2 Telecom as well as the Australian Academic and Research Network.

During peaks Yahoo tops out at less than 1Gbps and Microsoft (News - Alert) almost reaches 2Gbps, but Netflix, on the other hand, is responsible for nearly 13Gbps at peak times. And, IX reports a boost in overall traffic, from 30Gbps to 45Gbps shortly after the launch of Netflix services.

Travel half way around the globe, in North America, streaming services make up more than 70 percent of peak traffic, with Netflix accountable for 37 percent of overall traffic. The same Sandvine (News - Alert) research indicates that only five years ago streaming services made up less than 35 percent of downstream traffic.

According to Statistic Brain, Netflix has provided members with over 2 billion hours of viewing entertainment via hi-speed Internet. Cord-cutters and binge watchers are powering this streaming “revolution,” making Netflix, Hulu (News - Alert), Amazon and its various streaming siblings a driving force for content delivery networks to modernize to the next generation of network solution.

“Streaming Video has grown at such a rapid pace in North America that the leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago,” Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo noted.

The explosion of video on demand services and usage must be a network focus. Content delivery networks are tasked with supporting this influx in conjunction with the dynamic content coming from the enterprise, and lagging coupled with excessive buffering is not something users are fond of – nobody likes the spinning wheel. Next generation content delivery networks leverage the cloud and innovation to ensure these bumps in the road give way to an autobahn-like user experience.

For now, I can’t say that Orange is the New Black, but I can certainly blame Frank Underwood.