System design from First principal: The Cost of Communication [3/15]

Описание: The fastest network call is the one you never make.
In this third installment of our System Design First Principles series, we move from the internal physics of a single machine to the chaotic "tax-heavy" world of distributed systems. Most engineers treat a network call like a local function call, but from a first principles perspective, that is a 1,000,000x performance lie.
We dive deep into the "Communication Tax"—the hidden cost of DNS, TCP/TLS handshakes, Kernel context switching, and the "Serialization Crisis" caused by JSON.
What we cover:
The Fallacy of the Local Call: Why a network request is like waiting 11 days for a book vs. 1 second to grab it from your desk.
The Serialization Crisis: Why JSON is "physics-illiterate" and how binary formats like Protobuf and FlatBuffers save 30% of your CPU.
The Speed of Light: Why the physical size of the Earth limits your P99s (and how QUIC/HTTP3 tries to cheat it).
Real-World Optimization: How Discord and Netflix use Zero-Copy and gRPC to handle trillions of messages without the "Kernel Tax."
The First Principle: How to design "chunky" instead of "chatty" APIs.
If you want to build systems that handle millions of requests per second, you have to stop thinking about code and start thinking about the logistics of the wire.

Resources mentioned:
Apache Arrow (Zero-copy data)
gRPC & Protobuf documentation
Cloudflare’s guide to QUIC/HTTP3
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