video streaming and caching proxies

[Ben Scott]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> wrote:
> I doubt this would be possible.  Remember, the stuff that is
> transmitted is DRMed up the yazoo, and streamed (aka, unlikely to be
> going over HTTP)

  I'd guess that, at a minimum, they're using HTTP over SSL.  So an
HTTP proxy would just see a CONNECT method for an encrypted pipe,
which cannot be cached.

  I'd also guess it's more likely NetFlix is using a UDP-based
protocol.  UDP is more appropriate for streaming, since the system
won't get bogged down retransmitting data for something that's already
passed in real-time.

  The only reasons I can think of to use HTTP (SSL or not) are (1)
lame programmers who don't know how to do anything else, and (2)
TCP/80 is the universal firewall bypass port.  But even if they're
using something that smells like cleartext HTTP, it's a sure bet the
actual payload is encrypted and DRM'ed.

-- Ben