Piyush Garg: The video discusses creating a custom lightweight protocol for server-to-server communication in microservices architecture, highlighting the limitations of HTTP and introducing gRPC as a solution.
Piyush Garg - I built my own Protocol - Here is the reason!
The discussion begins with an explanation of protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP, and their roles in server-to-server (S2S) communication. The speaker highlights the inefficiencies of using HTTP for internal microservices communication due to its overhead, such as headers and status codes, which are unnecessary for simple data exchanges. The video proposes creating a custom lightweight protocol using TCP to reduce this overhead, focusing on direct text transfer without additional HTTP elements. This approach is demonstrated through a coding example using Node.js to set up a basic TCP server and client.
The speaker then transitions to discussing gRPC, a high-performance, open-source framework developed by Google for efficient communication between client and server applications, particularly in distributed environments like microservices. gRPC operates over HTTP/2 and uses protocol buffers for serialization, offering benefits like language agnosticism, contract-first development, and support for streaming and binary serialization. The video emphasizes that gRPC is a battle-tested solution used by major companies like Netflix for backend communication, providing a reliable alternative to custom protocol development.
Key Points:
- HTTP is inefficient for internal microservices communication due to its overhead.
- A custom lightweight protocol using TCP can reduce overhead by eliminating unnecessary HTTP elements.
- gRPC, developed by Google, is a high-performance framework for efficient server-to-server communication.
- gRPC supports language agnosticism, contract-first development, and streaming, making it suitable for microservices.
- Major companies like Netflix use gRPC for backend communication, highlighting its reliability and efficiency.
Details:
1. Introduction to Protocols 📡
- Protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP are vital for enabling communication between different systems and applications, facilitating various functions such as data transfer, security, and connection reliability.
- In microservices architecture, protocols improve efficiency and scalability by allowing independent services to communicate effectively, leading to faster development and deployment cycles.
- Custom protocols can be developed to optimize communication for specific application needs, potentially improving performance and reducing latency.
- For example, HTTP is widely used in web browsing to retrieve and display web pages, while TCP ensures reliable data transmission across networks.
- The historical development of protocols underscores their evolving role in supporting increasingly complex digital infrastructures.
2. Server-to-Server Communication Explained 🔄
2.1. Understanding the Problem
2.2. Introduction to Protocols
2.3. Common Protocols
2.4. Communication Setup
2.5. How HTTP Works
2.6. Three-way Handshake
2.7. Reliability of HTTPS
2.8. Microservices and Internal Communication
3. Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication Strategies 🔄🔁
3.1. HTTP Servers in Microservices
3.2. Challenges of Using HTTP for Internal Communication
3.3. Coupling Issues with HTTP
3.4. Synchronous Communication Example
3.5. Asynchronous Communication Example
4. Implementing a Custom Protocol: Hands-On 💻
- Microservices communication can be enhanced through asynchronous processing, increasing scalability and reliability, as demonstrated by decoupling the auth service from the notification service.
- Using queues such as Redis-based queues, RabbitMQ, or Kafka supports high-throughput asynchronous communication.
- The challenge with synchronous service-to-service communication is the overhead created by HTTP protocol, which can be solved by creating a lightweight TCP protocol.
- A lightweight TCP protocol can eliminate headers, status codes, and cookies, focusing only on text transfer, similar to gRPC, but simpler for educational purposes.
- The process involves coding a custom protocol using Node.js, starting with setting up a server and client using TCP protocol.
- The server listens on port 9001 and establishes connections using sockets to handle multiple microservices connections.
- Data can be sent in chunks with identifiers to ensure complete transmission, concluded by a special character to signal the end of data.
- A simple implementation demonstrated how a client connects and sends a 'Hello World' message via TCP, showcasing direct string transfer without HTTP headers.
5. Challenges and Solutions in Protocol Design ⚙️
5.1. Protocol Connection Management
5.2. GRPC as a Solution for Server Communication
6. GRPC: A Solution for Server Communication 🚀
- GRPC enables language-agnostic communication between microservices, which is crucial when different services are built using different programming languages, such as Rust and Node.js.
- Contract-first development is highlighted, where a contract specifies what resources are available and in what data format, reducing the chance of errors like 404 not found in HTTP.
- GRPC's use of protocol buffers instead of JSON for binary serialization supports bi-directional streaming and real-time communication, enhancing performance and reducing latency.
- The recommendation to learn and implement GRPC is emphasized, noting its ease of implementation and its ability to manage internal state efficiently.
- Alternative server-to-server communication strategies, like WebSockets, queuing systems, and long polling, are mentioned, but GRPC is positioned as a preferred solution due to its efficiency in reducing latency and overhead.
- Implementing custom protocols is necessary to reduce latency, overhead, and network bandwidth in backend architectures, demonstrating the need for GRPC or similar solutions.
