Networking

These network design guides explain how requests travel from users to your servers. Each post covers one layer and its trade-offs.

Start with load balancing and how a CDN works. Then gRPC vs REST helps with service calls. Later posts cover DNS, WebSockets and rate limits.

12 articles

15/03/2024 10 min read

HTTP/2 vs HTTP/3: Multiplexing, QUIC, and Real-World Performance

HTTP/2 vs HTTP/3 compares streams, head-of-line blocking, and QUIC so you can pick a protocol that stays fast when packets drop on real networks today.
26/12/2018 10 min read

gRPC vs REST: Protocol Buffers, Streaming, and Production Trade-offs

gRPC vs REST compares protocol buffers, streaming, and JSON APIs so you can pick a contract that stays…
09/12/2016 11 min read

L4 vs L7 Load Balancing: Where the Balancer Looks

L4 vs L7 load balancing compared: the layer 4 load balancer's connection-level speed, the layer 7 load balancer's…
07/10/2016 12 min read

Long Polling vs Server-Sent Events: Choosing a Push Strategy

Long polling vs SSE compared: how server sent events work, where websockets fit, sse vs polling costs, and…
05/08/2016 12 min read

WebSockets in System Design: When You Need a Persistent Connection

What are websockets: the websocket vs http comparison, the websocket connection lifecycle in six steps, and scaling websocket…
03/06/2016 11 min read

Rate Limiting in System Design: Algorithms and Distributed Enforcement

The rate limiting algorithms that matter (token bucket, leaky bucket, sliding window) how distributed enforcement works across a…
03/05/2016 10 min read

DNS for Backend Engineers: Resolution, Caching, Failover, and Debugging

DNS for Backend Engineers shows how name lookups, caches, and TTL choices fail in production, and how you…
01/04/2016 9 min read

API Gateway in System Design: The Front Door of Microservices

What an API gateway does (routing, authentication, rate limits, transformation) how it differs from a reverse proxy and…
29/01/2016 10 min read

How a CDN Works: Edge Caching, TTLs, and Cache Hit Ratio

How a CDN serves content from edge servers near users; cache hits, origin fetches, TTLs, cache hit ratio,…
26/11/2015 8 min read

Reverse Proxy Explained: The Server in Front of Your Servers

What a reverse proxy is, what it does (TLS termination, routing, security) how it differs from a forward…
24/09/2015 10 min read

Load Balancing in System Design: Types, Algorithms, and Health Checks

What a load balancer does, how L4 and L7 balancing differ, which algorithm to pick (round robin, least…
20/08/2015 10 min read

TCP vs UDP: Protocol Trade-offs for Modern Backend Systems

TCP vs UDP explains when you want reliable streams, when datagrams win, and how loss, latency, and head-of-line…