Netflix had a chance of breaking the Internet over the weekend in America.

The hugely popular movie streaming company released the second season of the award-winning drama "House of Cards" on Friday, just as winter storms turned large swaths of America into a nation of stay-at-homes — a combination that was bound to test America's creaky broadband infrastructure to its limits.

Even Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was worried about the strain on the system. Last month he told an interviewer his wife berates him over the sometimes choppy connection to Netflix.