5thson.eth (fifthson)

Understanding DNS: More Than Just “Name to IP” https://hackmd.io/@manbankat/H1A1XCo4bx As part of my 2026 system design deep dive, I just completed a full breakdown of Domain Name System (DNS) architecture and it’s impressive how much complexity sits behind a single browser request. DNS is one of those systems that “just works” until it doesn’t. From a system design perspective, DNS is: - A globally distributed system - Hierarchical by design - Highly available and fault-tolerant - Latency-sensitive and cache-driven I studied how a request flows through: - Recursive resolvers (with caching & TTL trade-offs) - Root name servers - TLD servers (.com, .org, .io, etc.) - Authoritative name servers (source of truth)

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What stood out is how DNS decisions directly impact: - Load balancing - Service discovery - Reliability - Security boundaries - Even cryptographic trust models (DNSSEC) In distributed systems and especially crypto, blockchain, and cloud-native architectures, DNS failures are not “small issues”; they cascade. This reinforced a key lesson: You cannot design scalable systems without understanding the network layer. Next up: deeper Load Balancing Back to fundamentals. Back to system thinking. hashtag#SystemDesign hashtag#DistributedSystems hashtag#Networking hashtag#DNS hashtag#Infrastructure hashtag#Scalability hashtag#Security hashtag#Cryptography hashtag#LearningInPublic

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STATELESS vs STATEFULL SERVERS At its core, the client–server model is simple. Clients initiate requests, servers process those requests and return responses. But the real design complexity begins when you ask a seemingly small question: where does state live? In stateless systems, the server does not retain any client-specific information between requests. Every request must carry all the data required for processing. This makes scaling significantly easier, because any request can be handled by any server instance. It also explains why stateless systems lean heavily on cryptography, such as signed tokens and JWTs, to establish trust and identity without server-side memory.

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