When preparing for software engineering or system design interviews, networking concepts often come up in subtle but important ways. Whether it’s choosing between REST, gRPC, or GraphQL, explaining how HTTP/3 improves performance, or troubleshooting latency issues in a distributed system, understanding the fundamentals can help you stand out. Let’s break down the key topics we discussed into an easy-to-digest guide. 1. OSI Model: The Foundation of Networking The OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model is a conceptual framework that divides networking into seven layers, each with distinct responsibilities: ...

As your app starts growing, one of the first things to feel the heat is your database. Queries slow down, reports get delayed, and your users start noticing. That’s when you start hearing scary words like replication, sharding, horizontal scaling… 😵‍💫 Don’t worry — scaling a database isn’t black magic. In fact, it’s a lot more manageable when you understand the core concepts. So, let’s break it down — one question at a time. ...