Until now, Netflix has depended on other companies to do the heavy lifting for delivering its streaming video to the internet — utilizing content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai that specialize in getting massive petabytes of data delivered to your ISP without bottlenecks. Netflix has just announced the "Open Connect Network," its own CDN for delivering the "billion hours per month" of video it streams to ISPs. The company is also offering up its hardware design and open sourcing its software for other companies to use, though whether any ISPs will take Netflix up on its offer is a slightly more complicated matter, as GigaOM notes.

Netflix says that currently it's using the Open Connect Network to deliver around 5 percent of its video to ISPs, but will eventually use it exclusively. As a cost-saving measure, the move makes sense; Netflix is certainly big enough now to warrant having its own CDN rather than paying third parties.