The Reactive Edge

There is a huge demand for responsive, real-time mobile and web experiences, but current architectural patterns do not easily accommodate applications that respond to events in real time. Common solutions using message queues or HTTP long-polling quickly lead to resiliency, scalability, and development velocity challenges, due to the need to manage queues and develop complex workarounds for problems like thundering herds and dropped events. By adopting a protocol providing Reactive Streams semantics over the network boundary, we have been able to solve many of these problems at the communication layer. Using streams, data can be pushed to clients when it changes instead of having to long poll, while backpressure obviates the need for queues throughout the system. This makes it possible to create rich application experiences and support use-cases such as mobile-to-mobile communication and large file transfers that would be difficult or cost-prohibitive with traditional networking.

Transcript

1. The Reactive Edge: Reinventing the Edge Tier Using a Reactive Communication Protocol Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
2. Who Am I? Ryland Degnan Chief Technical Officer at Netifi Formerly Netflix Edge Platform Team Contributor to RSocket, RxNetty linkedin.com/in/rjdegnan twitter.com/rjdegnan Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
3. “The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.” —Alan Kay The Web is a Joke… Source: http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442 Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
4. The Web is a Joke… Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
5. Increased Connectivity Massive Mobile Device Growth Realtime Interaction Expected The World is Changing… Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
6. Image Messaging New connected experiences are being created everyday VR Video Games Video Streaming The World is Changing… Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
7. Communication Communication is the foundation that all of these experiences are built upon Communication Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
8. HTTP Would you build your house on an old foundation? Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
9. The Foundation is Rotten HTTP Lots of Moving Parts Communicating between applications is complicated and inefficient. Unable to Cancel Work in Progress Server Unable to Signal When Ready to Handle Traffic Complicated Server and Application Configuration Errors are Hard to Handle Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
10. Does it have to be that way? Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com The Foundation is Rotten
11. Time to Change the Foundation More Performant More Secure Cheaper and Easier to Build Faster Time to Market By changing the way applications communicate you can easily build rich experiences Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
12. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
13. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
14. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
15. HTTP Thundering herds Cascading failure Circuit breaking Retry logic Timeouts Configuration Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
16. HTTP TCP is a full-duplex protocol! Can’t we do better? Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
17. Streams Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
18. 2 2 2 2 2 2 Streams Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
19. 2 2 2 Streams Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
20. 2 2 2 Streams Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
21. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
22. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
23. HTTP Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
24. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
25. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
26. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
27. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
28. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
29. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
30. RSocket Reactive Streams over network boundaries, with different interaction models Application flow control, supports cancellation of work in progress Collaboration between Netflix, Facebook, Pivotal, Netifi and others A Better Foundation Reactive Streams Common interfaces for streaming data across an asynchronous boundary Collaboration between Netflix, Lightbend, Twitter, Pivotal and others Many implementations, now supported in JDK 9 Flow API Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
31. Towards a Reactive Edge: A Netflix Case Study Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
32. Genesis of the Netflix Edge Source: https://www.capgemini.com/2017/03/what-is-fog-and-edge-computing/ Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
33. The Netflix API circa 2007 Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
34. The Netflix API circa 2007 Fine-grained REST API forces client applications to make multiple calls that need to be assembled Mobile clients pay the price of WAN latency multiple times Ignores differences between devices Poor developer velocity for UI teams No fault tolerance isolation layer Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
35. The Netflix API circa 2012 Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
36. The Netflix Edge Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
37. The Edge is Expanding Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
38. Edge PoPs Core regions The Edge is Expanding Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
39. The Netflix API circa 2017 Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
40. Source: https://www.capgemini.com/2017/03/what-is-fog-and-edge-computing/ Evolution of the Netflix Edge Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
41. AWS Region AWS Region AWS Region Middle Tier & Platform Evolution of the Netflix Edge Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
42. Edge Network Edge Router Edge Router iOS Endpoint Load Balancer AWS Region AWS Region iOS User Evolution of the Netflix Edge Middle Tier & Platform Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
43. Edge Network Edge Router Edge Router iOS Endpoint Load Balancer AWS Region AWS Region iOS User Evolution of the Netflix Edge Middle Tier & Platform Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
44. Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com Reactive Edge Network… as a service A globally distributed Edge Network that anyone can plug into Self healing, no configuration of queues or circuit breakers Transparent discovery, load balancing, resumability, authentication/encryption
45. IoT Analytics Logs Data Streams Kafka Spark Hadoop Other Services Your Infrastructure Global Edge Network Edge Data Gateway Edge Data Gateway Proprietary Optimized Transport US West US East Durable Message Storage Your Apps and Devices Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
46. Reactive Programming Model Advanced Application Protocol Secure By Default Predictive Load Balancing Application Flow Control prevents overloading downstream systems Leverage the richness of Reactive Streams APIs for client and server code Predicts latency of downstream systems and routes to best endpoint Provides a layer of abstraction over the complexity of building distributed systems Reactive programming model over the network Guaranteed message ordering and delivery All communication is encrypted point-to-point preventing message tampering and viewing by unauthorized parties Provides Perfect Forward Secrecy preventing MITM attacks Automatically routes traffic away from unhealthy instances Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
47. Reactive Programming Model Identical Examples No Callback Hell Easy fanout/composition Easier Error Handling Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
48. Proteus Protobuf compiler plugin Microservices with the click of a button https://github.com/netifi/proteus-java Netifi SDK Plug into our global edge network from anywhere Java & Android, iOS, C++ and JS soon https://github.com/netifi Get Involved! Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com
49. Simplifying Distributed Communication Simplifying Distributed Communication Ryland Degnan ryland@netifi.com