System Design

In today’s interconnected digital landscape, web apps and services are constantly under pressure. One ond hand, apps need to serve thousands of requests per minute from overenthusiastic clients and on the other hand, apps also need to protect themselves from malicious bots trying to brute-force login into the app. Uncontrolled... [Read More]

In the last post, we discussed how a load balancer acts as a highly efficient traffic cop for your servers. It stands in front of a group of servers (often called a “server farm” or “server pool”) and intelligently decides which server will handle each incoming request. [Read More]

Imagine you just opened a new restaurant and hired a single chef to run the kitchen. At first, business is slow, and the chef can easily handle every order alone. But as word spreads, more and more customers start pouring in. Now the chef is frantically cooking for one table... [Read More]

Imagine a developer, Samantha, building a blog. Initially, she keeps the architecture straightforward, serving only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. The blog posts themselves are basic Markdown files stored directly on the server’s disk. [Read More]

On the internet, messages from your device travel through many routers, ISPs, and international cables. With HTTP, data travels unprotected. It’s like sending a transparent and unsealed envelope through the mail. [Read More]

In the last few posts, we explored HTTP and the client-server model that underpins most communication over the internet. [Read More]

In the previous post on computer networks, we explored network and transport layer protocols. But for most developers, it’s the application layer (Layer 5 - 7 of the OSI framework) that has the most practical relevance. At the application layer, we have protocols (a language contract) defining how applications talk... [Read More]

Imagine you’re streaming your favorite show on Netflix, hopping on a video call with teammates across time zones, or just sending a quick message to a friend. Behind each of these simple actions, your device is taking part in a very real and highly structured conversation with other machines scattered... [Read More]