REQUEST JOURNEY
Follow a data packet through every layer of the internet — from click to response.
Client Request
A click. A keystroke. A request fires from any client — browser, mobile app, CLI, or IoT device — into the network. You are now live data.
DNS Lookup
Recursive resolver → Root nameserver → TLD → Authoritative DNS. Domain name translated to IP address. Target located.
CDN Check
Is the content cached at the edge? If yes — instant delivery. If no — continue deeper into the origin server.
Network / ISP
Fiber optics. Routers. Switches. BGP hops across continents. Undersea cables. Your packet races at light speed.
Forward Proxy
Client-side proxy. Masks your origin IP. Filters outbound traffic. Corporate networks, VPNs, content filtering.
TLS Handshake
Secure tunnel established. Certificates exchanged. Cipher suite negotiated. 1 round-trip. Data encrypted end-to-end.
Reverse Proxy
Server-side guardian. Nginx, HAProxy. Terminates TLS. Hides backend topology. Caches responses. Routes requests.
Firewall / WAF
Web Application Firewall. DDoS protection. Rate limiting. SQL injection blocked. XSS filtered. Only clean traffic passes.
API Gateway
Route management. Authentication & authorization. Rate throttling. API versioning. Request transformation. The traffic controller.
Load Balancer
Round Robin. Least Connections. IP Hash. Weighted routing. Traffic splits evenly across healthy server nodes.
Service Mesh
Microservice-to-microservice. Sidecar proxies. Service discovery. Circuit breaking. Istio. Envoy. The internal nervous system.
Server / Application
Business logic executes. Controllers, services, handlers. Algorithms compute. Data transforms. The brain of the operation.
Cache Layer
Redis. Memcached. In-memory lookup — microsecond access. Cache hit? Skip the database entirely. Speed multiplied.
Database
PostgreSQL. MongoDB. MySQL. Persistent storage. ACID transactions. Queries execute. Indexes scanned. The source of truth.
Message Queue
RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, Redis Streams. Producers send, consumers process. Decouple services. Handle spikes. Reliable async communication.
Queue Patterns
Work Queue, Pub/Sub, Dead Letter Queue, Event Streaming. How messages flow between services. The patterns that power modern async architectures.
Response Journey
The response travels BACK through every layer. App Server builds it, Cache stores it, Proxy compresses it, CDN caches at edge, Browser renders it. The full round trip.
Logging & Monitoring
Prometheus. Grafana. ELK Stack. Every request logged. Metrics tracked. Alerts configured. The all-seeing eye of infrastructure.
Complete Architecture
The full picture: every layer working together. From the user's click to the response — DNS, CDN, proxies, load balancers, services, databases, queues, and monitoring.