Network Protocols: A Senior Engineer's Guide

Network Protocols: A Senior Engineer's Guide A comprehensive guide to REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, and SSE for system design interviews. 1. REST (Representational State Transfer) REST is the foundation of most web communication, built on the stateless nature of HTTP. Transport Mechanism Operates primarily over HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2: Version Behavior HTTP/1.1 Each request usually requires a new TCP connection (or reuses with overhead) HTTP/2 Multiplexes multiple requests over a single connection to re