Novice To Ninja: System Design (High Level Design) in 2026

Explore how IP addresses enable internet communication by comparing IPv4 and IPv6, and distinguishing public, private, dynamic, and static addresses with practical examples.

Explore the osi model as a seven-layer reference framework for data transmission, from application to physical, detailing translation, encryption, segmentation, routing, and addressing.

Explore the TCP/IP model, its layered architecture from application to physical, compare with OSI, and learn how TCP and UDP drive reliable and fast network communication.

Explore how the domain name system translates domain names into ip addresses using dns resolver, root, tld, and authoritative servers, with caching for faster lookups.

Explore how a content delivery network reduces latency with edge servers and caching, delivering from location, and compare push vs pull CDNs with Amazon CloudFront, Google Cloud CDN, and Cloudflare.

Learn to design highly available systems by understanding uptime and five nines. Implement redundancy, replication, monitoring, and alerting with load balancers and geographic distribution to prevent single points of failure.

Explore vertical and horizontal scaling, upscaling and downscaling in system design, guided by load balancers, data consistency, and real-world examples like Amazon, Google, Netflix.

Explain how caching uses high speed memory to reduce latency, with the Instagram profile example showing cache miss and cache hit, and cover strategies, eviction, and invalidation outcomes.

Explore how a proxy acts as a middleman between clients and servers, with forward and reverse proxy architectures. Learn their advantages, disadvantages, and how they differ from load balancers.

Understand how a load balancer distributes traffic across multiple servers to ensure high availability and performance, using algorithms such as round robin, least connections, and resource-based routing.

Analyze distributed systems and the Cap theorem, outlining how consistency, availability, and partition tolerance trade off during network partitions; compare CP and AP approaches with real-world examples.

Analyze PACELC and CAP theorem, comparing partition tolerance, availability, and consistency trade-offs, then explore latency implications and strong versus eventual consistency in distributed systems.

Explore how raw data becomes meaningful information, and learn how databases and DBMSs organize, store, and secure data via SQL queries, with redundancy control and integrity.

Compare SQL and NoSQL databases, including relational schemas and primary/foreign keys. Explore document, key-value, graph, time series, wide-column, and multi-model databases with real-use cases.

Understand how database indexing speeds data retrieval using index tables and data pages. See how an index on department reduces a 25-second query to 9 seconds.

Explore database keys and normalization to prevent anomalies, learn first normal form, second normal form, third normal form, and bcnf, and understand denormalization for read-heavy analytics applications.

Explore database partitioning and sharding concepts, including horizontal and vertical partitioning, and learn hash-based sharding, list-based sharding, range-based sharding, and composite sharding to improve scalability, performance, and availability.

Explore the multitier architecture across presentation, web, application, and data tiers, and compare two-tier and three-tier designs, highlighting scalability, maintainability, security, and trade-offs.

Explore monoliths and microservices by examining a single code base, centralized database, and tightly coupled components, then learn how independently deployed services and decentralized data enable scalable architectures via APIs.

Explore how a message broker enables asynchronous communication between microservices, reducing latency and data loss by handling retries and decoupling producers and consumers through queues and pub-sub topics.

Learn how an API enables microservices to communicate by defining request and response structures. Explore the order and payment service interaction, including URI, base URL, endpoints, and Swagger documentation.

Explore REST, GraphQL, and gRPC fundamentals, including REST principles, GraphQL schema and resolvers, and gRPC with HTTP/2 and protobufs, plus when to use each.

Explore WebSockets, long polling, and server sent events to understand real-time data delivery, bidirectional and one-way communication, with use cases in chat, live notifications, and gaming.

Discover how service discovery enables microservices to locate each other dynamically through a discovery service, supporting registration, health checks, and address updates across client-side and server-side patterns.

Discover how a service mesh uses a sidecar proxy to manage secure, observable service-to-service communication with a control plane, enabling canary and blue-green deployments.

Explore how an api gateway provides a single entry point for client requests to multiple microservices. Learn to route, secure, translate protocols, and monitor and log traffic through the gateway.

Explore how rate limiters protect systems from ddos, ensure fairness, and control costs by regulating requests, reviewing token bucket, leaky bucket, fixed window, sliding window lock, and sliding window counter.

Explore how single sign-on unifies authentication across apps using identity provider, service provider, and identity broker. See how SAML, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect enable authentication and authorization.

Learn how OAuth provides secure authorization, allowing a client to access a user’s data on a resource server without sharing passwords, using authorization codes and access tokens.

Explore consistent hashing to evenly distribute data across multiple servers using a ring, hash-based sharding, and clockwise traversal, while reducing rebalancing with virtual nodes.

Master the seven-step system design interview framework—from requirements clarification to bottleneck resolution—and craft end-to-end, scalable solutions with data model, API, and high-level and detailed design.

Design a scalable url shortener using a seven-step system design approach. Clarify requirements, model data, design APIs, and address bottlenecks with caching, sharding, and zookeeper coordinated counters.

Apply a seven-step design approach to build a WhatsApp-like messaging app, covering requirements, data model, APIs, microservices, presence and notification services, WebSocket routing, and sql and no-sql storage.

Design a Twitter/X style newsfeed using a seven-step framework—requirements, data model, APIs, high-level and detailed design, microservices, ranking, caching, and bottleneck resolution.

Presenting a seven-step system design for a video streaming platform like Netflix, covering requirements, data models, API design, microservices, Open Connect CDN, and bottlenecks.

Design a ride-sharing system like Uber using a seven-step approach, microservices architecture, location services, geohashing, and robust APIs.