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Hectal
Roadmap
Phase 6Beginner8 of 19 in the curriculum

Networking Fundamentals

HTTP, HTTPS, TCP/UDP, WebSockets, REST, gRPC — the layer HLD answers sit on.

Every HLD diagram hides a network: how does the browser find the server, which verbs flow, and why would we ever pick a socket over an HTTP call? This phase builds the vocabulary to talk about request flows.

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10 topics ~67 min 8 code blocks & diagrams
Start with the first topic
1
6.1

Internet Basics

Client, server, DNS, IP, port — the five components behind every request you've ever made.

7 min 1 diagram practice

2
6.2

HTTP

The verbs, headers, body, cookies and status codes that every API contract is written in.

7 min 1 code practice

3
6.3

HTTPS / TLS

TLS wraps HTTP: certificates prove identity, the handshake agrees on keys, and everything after is encrypted.

7 min 1 diagram practice

4
6.4

TCP vs UDP

Reliable ordered streams vs fast lossy datagrams — and why video/real-time apps pick the lossy one.

7 min 1 diagram practice

5
6.5

WebSocket

A persistent, bidirectional, message-oriented connection for low-latency push — chat, live cursors, trading feeds.

7 min 1 diagram practice

6
6.6

REST

The dominant API style: resources + verbs + status codes + statelessness.

6 min practice

7
6.7

gRPC

RPC with a schema, HTTP/2 multiplexing, and binary protobuf payloads — the internal-to-service favorite.

6 min 1 diagram practice

8
6.8

Long Polling

The HTTP-compatible trick for push-ish: hold the response open until there's news or a timeout.

7 min 1 diagram practice

9
6.9

SSE (Server-Sent Events)

One-way server→client push over a single long-lived HTTP connection — the cheap realtime win.

6 min practice

10
6.10

DNS Resolution Flow

The exact path a name takes to become an IP — and the trip points where HLDs get slow or break.

7 min 1 diagram practice