Network Programming and Scripting Proficiency Questions
Show practical programming and automation skills focused on networking tasks, using languages such as Python, Go, or shell scripting. Topics include socket programming and protocol knowledge for TCP and UDP, HTTP and higher level APIs, automation of network devices and cloud platform APIs, use of client libraries and remote management protocols, writing maintainable scripts and tools with error handling and retries, testing and validation of network code, performance and scaling considerations for scripts and agents, debugging and logging strategies, and code review and collaboration practices for operational tooling. Candidates should be able to discuss examples of network automation, tooling, monitoring integrations, and how they handled reliability and performance trade offs.
MediumSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a lightweight log-forwarding agent in Go: it should read application logs, batch them, and send to a central collector via HTTP with authentication. Address batching strategy, backpressure and memory limits, local disk buffering for durability, and how to preserve ordering per-host. Provide high-level component layout and key implementation choices.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Create a code-review checklist specifically for network automation scripts and small operational agents. Cover security (secrets, permissions), error handling, retries, idempotency, resource constraints, testing, logging, and documentation. Explain why each checklist item is important for SRE reliability.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Explain the TCP three-way handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) and how a SYN flood attack exploits it. In the context of writing a TCP client in Python that must be resilient to slow or half-open connections, list which socket options, timeouts, and operational patterns you would configure (e.g., non-blocking connect, SO_KEEPALIVE, TCP_USER_TIMEOUT) and why. Describe how the client should detect and recover from half-open peers.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
You observe intermittent TCP connection hangs in a data center. The path appears to be asymmetric. Describe a low-level debugging plan: which packet captures to take and from where, which TCP fields to inspect, how to use traceroute/mtr, and mitigation steps you could apply quickly to reduce user impact while you investigate.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a network-monitoring agent architecture that can be deployed to 10 million hosts, collecting TCP/UDP service metrics every 10 seconds and pushing them to regional collectors. Discuss discovery, batching, bandwidth optimization, backpressure, authentication, upgrade strategy, storage/ingestion scaling, and how you'd set SLOs for the monitoring pipeline.
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