System Design Fundamentals: A Complete Guide
A comprehensive guide to system design — from networking and protocols to scalability, storage, performance, reliability, security, and real-world case studies. Covers the 4-step interview blueprint: Problem → Scale → High-Level Design → Infrastructure Decisions → Final Design.
Table of Contents
Part I: Foundations
- 1. Introduction What is System Design, why important, evolution, course navigation
- 2. Networking & Communication IP, DNS, client-server, proxies, load balancing, API gateway, CDN
- 3. Protocols TCP/UDP, HTTP, REST, real-time protocols, modern APIs
- 4. Architecture Patterns Multi-tier, microservices, event-driven
- 5. Web Concepts Sessions, serialization, CORS
Part II: Core Architecture & Scaling
- 6. Scalability Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, load balancers, auto-scaling
- 7. Storage SQL vs NoSQL, sharding, replication, object storage, distributed file systems, big data
- 8. Performance Caching, queues, concurrency, DB optimization
- 9. Reliability High availability, fault tolerance, backup, disaster recovery
- 10. Security Authentication, authorization, data protection, infrastructure security
Part III: Interview Blueprint & Case Studies
- 11. Interview Blueprint 4-step approach: Problem → Scale → HLD → Infra → Final Design
- 12. Case Studies URL shortener, ticketing, news feed, notifications, chat, auction, rental, cloud storage, video sharing, search engine, e-commerce, taxi, collaborative editor