System Design · Junior · Question 1 of 75
What happens when a user types a site's address and presses Enter?
- ✓Correct answer: DNS → connection (TCP/TLS) → HTTP request → response → page rendering
- 2The browser immediately downloads all the site's files from the nearest Google server
- 3The browser sends the request to a search engine, which redirects to the site
Explanation
The browser resolves the IP via DNS (with caches at every level), establishes a connection and the TLS handshake, sends the request, receives HTML, parses it, loads CSS/JS/images, builds the DOM and CSSOM, and performs layout and paint. It's the classic opening question for a performance discussion.