Code RoomLow-latency HLS edge delivery
HardPrep Room Coding #3601

Low-latency HLS edge delivery

System designDistributed systemsSenior–Staff~45 min

Design the edge delivery layer for Low-Latency HLS (LL-HLS) for sports/event streaming reaching 50M concurrent viewers with ~3s glass-to-glass latency over standard HTTP CDNs (not WebRTC). The challenge: LL-HLS works by chunking segments into tiny partial segments and using blocking playlist reloads + preload hints, which generates a storm of tiny, frequently-changing manifest and partial-segment requests that ordinary HTTP CDN caching handles badly. You need the latency of WebRTC-ish delivery while keeping the cacheability and scale of HTTP.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.

Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
0:00
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.