Building a Load Balancer from Scratch
Round-robin, least-connections, and consistent hashing: understanding the layer that sits in front of everything.
About this Course
Round-robin, least-connections, and consistent hashing: understanding the layer that sits in front of everything. This Infrastructure Engineering curriculum is designed to give you hands-on experience and deep conceptual understanding.
Across 4 intensive modules, you'll tackle real-world challenges and build practical projects that reinforce your learning. By the end of this journey, you'll have the skills and proof of work to demonstrate your expertise.
What you'll learn
Build a basic TCP proxy that accepts connections and forwards them to a backend server.
Implement multiple routing algorithms to distribute traffic across a pool of backend servers.
Implement consistent hashing to route users to the same server while allowing backend pools to scale.
Add active and passive health checking to automatically remove unhealthy backends and monitor load balancer metrics.
W1
TCP Sockets & Reverse Proxy Basics
TCP Sockets & Reverse Proxy Basics
Build a basic TCP proxy that accepts connections and forwards them to a backend server.
3 videos•34m
3 readings
3 topics
1 homework
Topics
1.1
Lec-86: Socket Programming in Computer Networks
Socket Programming Refresher
8 minutes
1.2
Python Socket Programming Tutorial 1 - Basics of Networking
Concurrency in Network Programming
11 minutes
1.3
System Design Interview: When to use API Gateway, Load Balancer, or Reverse Proxy?
The Reverse Proxy Architecture
15 minutes
References
Week 1: TCP Sockets & Reverse Proxy Basics
Week 2: Load Balancing Algorithms
Week 3: Consistent Hashing & Sticky Sessions
Week 4: Health Checks, Failover & Observability
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