Interview Questions/System Design/Design a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
AdvancedSystem-Design
45 min

Design a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDNCachingNetworkingSecurity
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Interview Question

Design a global CDN for static and dynamic content delivery, cache invalidation, SSL termination, and DDoS protection.

Key Points to Cover
  • Edge PoPs, cache hierarchy, consistent hashing
  • Cache invalidation and TTL strategies
  • Dynamic content acceleration and edge compute
  • TLS termination, cert rotation, key management
  • DDoS detection, rate limiting, WAF integration
Evaluation Rubric
Strong caching hierarchy & invalidation25% weight
Dynamic acceleration & edge compute25% weight
TLS/DDoS/WAF security strategy25% weight
Global scale and failover handling25% weight
Hints
  • 💡Think about cache key normalization to prevent evasion.
Potential Follow-up Questions
  • How do you handle live video at the edge?
  • How to defend against large volumetric attacks?
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