Protocol & Network Design Interview Questions

calendarDec 14, 2025 · 1 min read · protocols networking interview distributed-systems consensus grpc websocket  ·
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Comprehensive protocol design and distributed systems interview questions covering networking, communication protocols, and distributed consensus.

Network Protocols

Interview questions covering fundamental and advanced networking concepts:

  • Easy: OSI model, TCP vs UDP, DNS, HTTP, REST APIs, WebSocket, authentication
  • Medium: HTTP/2, gRPC, distributed consensus (Raft/Paxos), message queues, idempotency, rate limiting, circuit breakers, service mesh, event sourcing, distributed tracing
  • Hard: Custom protocol design, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, distributed locks, distributed transactions, CDN protocols, QUIC/HTTP3, gossip protocols, vector clocks, distributed rate limiting, blockchain consensus

Protocol Design

Topics include:

  • Transport layer protocols (TCP, UDP, QUIC)
  • Application layer protocols (HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC)
  • Distributed consensus algorithms
  • Custom protocol design for specific use cases
  • Real-time communication protocols
  • Content delivery networks
  • Peer-to-peer protocols

Distributed Systems Patterns

  • Consensus mechanisms (Raft, Paxos, PBFT)
  • Distributed locking and coordination
  • Message queues and pub/sub
  • Event sourcing and CQRS
  • Circuit breakers and resilience patterns
  • Service mesh architectures
  • Distributed tracing and observability

Snippets