Netflix has deployed caches of its catalog to Indian Internet providers in Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad, MediaNama has learned. Netflix had already deployed such caches, known as Open Connect Appliances, throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. These caches allow users to directly stream titles from an Internet provider's network, as opposed to streaming them from Netflix's own servers. So far, YOU Broadband, Hathway, and ACT Broadband are learned to have Open Connect Appliances embedded on their network (see methodology below). Netflix declined to participate in this story. YOU Broadband did not respond to a request for comment. ACT Broadband didn't have an immediate comment to offer; we will update this post if they make a statement. MediaNama has also reached out to Hathway for comment. Methodology Netflix's debug console on desktop browsers displays information on which server a particular title is being streamed from, and how fast that stream is. I noticed last week that the data speed of my stream had increased tenfold from usual, and it turned out that the server Netflix was streaming from was an Open Connect Appliance. The URL was: c001.pnq001.youbroadband.isp.nflxvideo.net Even in non-cache servers, Netflix uses three digit airport codes to designate the city where a server is based. PNQ is the code for Pune, where I live. And the URL also mentioned the name of YOU Broadband, my ISP. Therefore I could reasonably conclude that this was an Open Connect Appliance embedded in YOU Broadband's Pune network. By substituting the constituents of that…
