[System Design Tech Case Study Pulse #90] 2 Billion Users and Billions of Messages Daily : How Whatsapp Actually Works
Behind the tech with detailed explanation and flow chart....
Hi All,
WhatsApp's ability to handle billions of messages daily across the globe is a testament to its highly sophisticated and scalable messaging infrastructure. This feat requires an intricate system of distributed services, real-time processing engines, and intelligent routing algorithms working in perfect harmony to ensure instant message delivery and seamless communication for over 2 billion users worldwide.
Let's dive deep into how WhatsApp engineered this complex system, exploring the key architectural decisions, scaling strategies, and optimizations that enabled their global messaging dominance.
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System Overview
Before we delve into WhatsApp's messaging infrastructure technology, let's look at some key metrics that highlight the scale of their operations:
- Daily active users: 2 billion+
- Messages sent per day: 100 billion+
- Peak messages per second: 10 million+
- Countries served: 180+
- Languages supported: 60+
- Data centers: 50+ globally
- Server instances: 500,000+
- Database transactions per second: 200 million+
- Storage capacity: Petabytes
- Network bandwidth: 500+ Tbps
- End-to-end encrypted messages: 100%
- Availability: 99.99%
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How It works (Behind the Tech ) —
1. The Sender composes a message in the WhatsApp App. The app connects to WhatsApp's servers through the Global Load Balancer, which routes the connection to the nearest data center.
2. The Connection Manager establishes and maintains a persistent connection with the sender's device. It also updates the Presence System about the user's online status.