It picked the nearest box, and the nearest box did not have the film
A streaming catalogue served from hardware you own, installed inside other companies' networks — hundreds of boxes sitting in the machine rooms of the internet providers whose subscribers watch you. The catalogue is known in advance, so nothing is fetched when somebody presses play; the boxes are loaded overnight, before the audience wakes up.
A title released at midnight. By morning most boxes held it and a few did not, and the service kept sending viewers to whichever box was nearest. Those viewers waited while it was fetched across the country, on the expensive link, at breakfast time.
- R1The hardware sits inside other companies' networks. They accept it because it saves them carrying traffic, and the arrangement only holds while it costs them nothing to host: they must be able to decide which of their own subscribers it serves, with the routing tools they already run, without filing a ticket with you.
- R2Which location a viewer streams from is decided when they press play, from what that location is currently holding, whether it is healthy, and how far it is from that viewer. Two viewers a minute apart may correctly get different answers.
- R3Locations report their own state and are never trusted to decide globally where anybody streams from — they sit in networks you do not own. Something has to be continuously gathering what they report, or the choice in R2 is made from nothing.
Outside every boundary: Playback service (starts a session), Members (pressing play), Origin store (the catalogue), The host's router (announces its own), an empty slot for the the box in their machine room, tier 1, an empty slot for the where this viewer is sent, tier 1, an empty slot for the what that decision reads, tier 2 Connections: Origin store publishes to the box in their machine room — loaded overnight The host's router calls the box in their machine room — which subscribers Members calls Playback service — press play Playback service calls where this viewer is sent — where from? where this viewer is sent calls what that decision reads — reads the box in their machine room publishes to what that decision reads — reports in