::::Holy moly: Netflix clocks 42B API requests per month::::

<div class=&quot;custm_img_blk&quot;><img src=&quot;http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337134927_temp.jpg&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; align=&quot;left&quot; /></div><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;>&nbsp;Netflix clocked close to 42 billion API requests&nbsp;per day&nbsp;in January, according to the company&rsquo;s director of engineering Daniel Jacobson, who revealed the number as part of a presentation he recently gave to the Paypal engineering team.&nbsp;<span style=&quot;background-color: transparent&quot;>In his slides</span>, Jacobson pointed out that the number of API requests has grown 70-fold in just two years, from 600 million in January of 2010 to 41.7 billion in January of 2012.</p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;><span style=&quot;margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; background-color: transparent&quot;><img class=&quot;aligncenter size-full wp-image-521884&quot; src=&quot;http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-42-billion.jpg?w=604&amp;h=440&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; title=&quot;netflix api 42 billion&quot; width=&quot;604&quot; height=&quot;440&quot; /></span></p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;>Providing an API that is resilient enough to handle these kinds of demands is not a small feat, and Jacobson&rsquo;s slides reveal some of the principles behind the architecture used for the task. However, there&rsquo;s an even bigger story to this: The sole reason that Netflix&rsquo;s API has gotten so popular in the last two years is that the company&rsquo;s service is seeing huge amounts of traffic from connected devices.</p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;>Netflix originally built its API with third-party developers in mind, which used it to build websites and apps to manage one&rsquo;s DVD queue and similar things. However,&nbsp;<span style=&quot;background-color: transparent&quot;>the Netflix engineering team eventually realized</span>&nbsp;that it could use the very same API to bring Netflix to devices like the Roku, the PS3 and the Xbox. To see how much of an impact that decision had, check out where API requests came from in 2008:</p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;><span style=&quot;margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; background-color: transparent&quot;><img class=&quot;aligncenter size-full wp-image-521889&quot; src=&quot;http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-requests-2008.jpg?w=604&amp;h=456&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; title=&quot;netflix api requests 2008&quot; width=&quot;604&quot; height=&quot;456&quot; /></span></p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;>Compare that with API requests in 2011:</p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;><span style=&quot;margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; background-color: transparent&quot;><img class=&quot;aligncenter size-full wp-image-521890&quot; src=&quot;http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-requests-2011.jpg?w=604&amp;h=457&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; title=&quot;netflix api requests 2011&quot; width=&quot;604&quot; height=&quot;457&quot; /></span></p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;>Guess which segment Netflix is focusing on these days? Exactly:</p><p style=&quot;margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline&quot;><span style=&quot;margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; background-color: transparent&quot;><img class=&quot;aligncenter size-full wp-image-521891&quot; src=&quot;http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/netflix-api-emphasis.jpg?w=604&amp;h=472&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; title=&quot;netflix api emphasis&quot; width=&quot;604&quot; height=&quot;472&quot; /></span></p>

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