System designHardsd-g703

Subject Live stream ingest distribution protocolLevel Senior–Staff~50 minCommon in Networking & APIs · Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology, Telecom

Question

Design a live-streaming ingest + distribution system (think a creator goes live and 2M viewers watch) with sub-5 s glass-to-glass latency for the low-latency tier, adaptive bitrate, and the ability to absorb a flash crowd when a stream goes viral. Decide the ingest protocol, the transcode/packaging stage, and how you fan a single source stream out to millions without melting the origin. Where's the hard part — ingest, transcode, or distribution?

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.

Learn the concepts

Narrate your design

Loading whiteboard…

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.