Networking

Networking in system design is how requests travel from a user’s device to your servers and between your services. It covers DNS resolution, TCP and TLS connections, HTTP versions, load balancers, CDNs and protocols such as REST, gRPC and WebSockets. Each hop adds latency and a failure point, so knowing these layers helps you place caches, set timeouts and rate limits, and pick the right protocol for each call.

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…