What is the best way to practice mock system design interviews?

The best way to practice mock system design interviews is to use a structured platform like System Design Lab. It provides real interview questions (design URL shortener, design Twitter, design Netflix), an interactive diagram builder, an AI interviewer that asks follow-up questions, and detailed feedback on your architecture, scalability decisions, and trade-offs — exactly like a real FAANG interview.

How do I prepare for a system design interview?

To prepare for a system design interview: (1) Learn core concepts like distributed systems, caching, databases, sharding, and message queues. (2) Practice drawing architecture diagrams under time pressure. (3) Take knowledge quizzes to test your understanding. (4) Do mock system design interviews with AI feedback to get comfortable explaining your decisions. (5) Review community solutions to see how others approach the same problems. System Design Lab covers all five steps in one platform.

What system design interview questions should I practice?

Common system design interview questions include: Design a URL shortener, Design Twitter/social media feed, Design Netflix/video streaming, Design a distributed cache, Design a rate limiter, Design a notification system, Design a ride-sharing app like Uber. System Design Lab offers 30+ curated problems covering all major categories asked at FAANG and top-tier tech companies.

Is there a free mock system design interview tool?

Yes — System Design Lab offers a free 7-day trial with access to 3 mock system design interview problems, all learning modules, all quizzes, and community solutions. No credit card required. Premium (₹999 for 90 days) unlocks unlimited problems and AI interviewer access.

How does System Design Lab's AI interview feedback work?

After you submit your system design, the AI evaluates your written explanation and architecture diagram together. It scores you on completeness, scalability, fault tolerance, and clarity, then gives you specific, actionable feedback — similar to what a senior engineer would say after your interview. You can also chat with an AI interviewer in real-time during your attempt.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) | Learn

What a CDN Is and Why It Exists

A Content Delivery Network is a globally distributed fleet of cache servers that sit between your users and your origin servers. Instead of every request travelling to a single origin (which might be in one region), users are served from a nearby edge server holding a cached copy of your content.

The Two Things a CDN Buys You

Lower latency via geographic proximity — physics sets a floor on round-trip time. A request from Mumbai to a server in Virginia crosses ~13,000 km; even at the speed of light through fibre that is ~130 ms each way before any processing. An edge server 50 km away answers in single-digit milliseconds. Closer = faster, full stop.
Origin offload — when the edge can answer from cache, the request never reaches your origin. A CDN with a high cache hit ratio can absorb 90%+ of traffic, slashing origin bandwidth, CPU, and cost — and shielding it from traffic spikes and floods.

What Belongs on a CDN

Classic candidates are static assets: images, CSS, JS bundles, fonts, video segments, PDF downloads. Modern CDNs also accelerate dynamic content (API responses, personalized pages) via edge logic, connection reuse to origin, and short-TTL caching. The mental model: push bytes as close to the user as possible, and reach the origin as rarely as possible.