Is this a video course?

No. This is an interactive, slide-based learning platform. Each lesson has rich text, animated diagrams, live code editors, and quizzes. You learn by reading, interacting, and doing, not by watching videos passively.

How long do I have access?

Forever. Both pricing tiers are one-time payments with lifetime access. This includes all current 766 lessons and any future content we add.

What level of experience do I need?

None. We start from absolute basics like 'What is latency?' and build up to distributed consensus protocols. The Foundation level assumes zero prior knowledge of system design.

How much does the system design course cost?

7.99 US dollars for lifetime access globally, or 499 Indian rupees for lifetime access in India. One-time payment, no subscription, no hidden fees. 11 lessons are free with no signup required.

What technologies are covered?

Everything from DNS and load balancers to Kubernetes, Kafka, distributed databases, consensus protocols, stream processing, security architecture, and observability. We cover principles and real-world implementations used at Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, Stripe, and more.

Is this useful for system design interview preparation?

Yes. The lessons are structured around the exact topics asked in system design interviews at FAANG and top-tier companies. Interactive diagrams help you practice whiteboard-style explanations. Covers everything from URL shortener design to distributed payment systems.

How is this different from ByteByteGo or Educative?

766 interactive lessons (4x more than most competitors), 16 different diagram types that build step by step, real production examples from Netflix, Google, Amazon, Uber, and Stripe, and lifetime access for a one-time payment of $7.99 instead of annual subscriptions costing 100 to 200 dollars per year.

Service A uses OpenTelemetry with W3C propagation. Service B uses an older Zipkin setup that only understands B3 headers. What happens to traces that flow through both services?

The trace breaks at Service B, it can't read W3C headers, so it starts a new trace instead of continuing the existing one, Incompatible propagation formats break trace continuity. Service B expects B3 headers (X-B3-TraceId, X-B3-SpanId) but receives W3C headers (traceparent). Since it can't read the context, it starts a fresh trace. The fix: configure OpenTelemetry to inject BOTH W3C and B3 headers during the migration period.

You have distributed tracing working for synchronous HTTP calls. But traces end at your Kafka producer, the consumer's spans aren't connected. What's missing?

Context propagation across the message queue, the producer needs to inject trace context into Kafka message headers, and the consumer needs to extract it, HTTP context propagation doesn't automatically extend to message queues. You need explicit context propagation for Kafka: the producer injects trace context into message headers (OpenTelemetry's Kafka instrumentation does this), and the consumer extracts it when processing the message. This creates a trace link across the async boundary.

Distributed Context Propagation

Name: System Design Masterclass
Availability: InStock

in Observability Monitoring

This lesson is part of the full System Design Masterclass. Unlock it along with 765 other lessons for a one-time payment.

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