Problems / Scaling, easy

Every request checks the session

Each API request validates its session with an auth service that has 40 slots. At 1,500 req/s it can’t keep up.

Free to open. Runs in your browser, no sign-up.

Your goals

Success ≥ 99%, p99 ≤ 500 ms.

The traffic

1,500 requests a second for 30 seconds: 90% reads, 10% writes.

The system

What each component does in this design, and what calls it. The simulator mimics each one from these settings.

ComponentIts job hereSettings
Load balancerLoad balancerTraffic enters here.Calls API.Layer 4 balancers route by IP and port; layer 7 balancers read HTTP and can route by path or header.–
APIApp serviceLoad balancer forwards to it.Calls Auth service, Redis cache (checked first), Postgres.Little's law: throughput ≈ concurrency ÷ latency. 200 slots at 50 ms serve about 4,000 req/s.3 replicas × 200 slots · timeout 1.0 s
Redis cacheCacheAPI checks it first for reads.An in-memory cache like Redis usually answers in well under a millisecond inside one region.95% hit rate
PostgresSQL databaseAPI reads it when Redis cache misses. API calls it for writes.Postgres runs one process per connection, which is why poolers like PgBouncer sit in front of busy databases.8 vCPU · 60 connections
Auth serviceAuth / identity serviceAPI calls it.Short-lived access tokens plus refresh tokens limit the damage if a token leaks.40 slots

Hints

Try it first. Open one hint at a time if you get stuck.

Hint 1

Find the component on every request’s path that turns red.

Hint 2

A shared dependency needs capacity for everyone’s traffic.

One way to solve it

Give the auth service more capacity (or cache sessions).

More scaling problems