Part 2: L4/L7 Load Balancing, API Gateways & eBPF Routing
← Previous Chapter: Part 1: CAP, PACELC & Clean Architecture | Series Hub: System Design Masterclass | Next Chapter: Part 3: Caching Strategies, Redis/Valkey & Stampede Prevention → Prerequisite: Read Part 1: CAP, PACELC & Clean Architecture Primer to understand distributed trade-offs and composite availability foundations. Answer-first: Layer 4 load balancers route packets via eBPF and Direct Server Return to achieve sub-millisecond wire speed, while Layer 7 API gateways inspect HTTP headers and enforce token bucket rate limits. Combining kernel-bypass XDP packet filtering with Go reverse proxy buffer pools sustains 100,000 requests per second with sub-5ms P99 latency bounds across distributed clusters. ...