System Design Lab
The System Design Lab focuses on how requests move through real distributed systems and how architecture decisions change performance, complexity, and failure behavior.
Core Topics
- API gateways
- load balancers
- service boundaries
- caches
- databases
- queues and workers
- replicas and sharding
- rate limiting
- retries and backpressure
Example Comparisons
Model request flow across gateway, cache, service, queue, and database layers.
Show timeout, retry amplification, dependency failure, and degraded mode behavior.
Compare correctness, latency, cost, complexity, and operability across design choices.
First High-Value Scenarios
- service behind cache and database
- queue-backed async workflow
- rate-limited public API
- read-replica architecture with stale-read risk
Output Standard
Users should leave with a better answer to:
- why use this component
- where does it help
- what operational cost does it add
- what breaks when traffic or failure increases
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