Next time you sit down to binge-watch old episodes of Futurama on Netflix, stop for a second to consider this: Netflix's giant video-streaming network is so mammoth, so absurdly huge, that it actually sends more data than the entire global internet could ever support. Technically, Netflix is bigger than the internet.

Netflix's VP of content delivery Ken Florance explained the situation in a fascinating interview with Wired. "Our peak traffic is more than that … .Our scale is actually larger than the international capacity of the Internet."

If that sounds impossible that is because it would be, except for one video-delivery tricks Netflix has up its sleeve. By using gadgets called Open Connect Devices—basically giant hard drives that can hold a whole Netflix—Netflix can delivery copies of itself to your local neighborhood ISP data center. 

This means that when you're slumped on the couch passing out to some movie on a Tuesday night, the ones and zeros that make up that movie don't have to travel all the way across the internet from Whoknowswhereisota, but instead just has to saunter a few miles from a nearby data center. It takes the bulk of the traffic off the internet's global freeway and concentrates it your less congested local roads instead. 

To learn more about how Netflix's digital tendrils continue to encircle the globe, you can read more over at Wired. And every time you spend a whole day streaming video, you can at least take solace in the fact that you're participating in a technological marvel. 

Source: Wired