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Open Dropbox (File Sync) →Open Instagram Feed →

Dropbox (File Sync) vs Instagram Feed

Dropbox (File Sync)

Dropbox (File Sync)

Chunking, content-addressed dedup, multi-device sync.

Components (7)

  • Desktop Client
  • API Gateway
  • Metadata Service
  • Upload Service
  • Chunk Store
  • MySQL
  • Notification Service

Headline numbers

  • Sync ops / sec (avg)~50K
  • Raw bytes uploaded / day~350 TB (post-dedup)
  • Bandwidth at peak~30 Gbps
Instagram Feed

Instagram Feed

Fan-out on write vs read, ranking, CDN.

Components (10)

  • Mobile Client
  • CDN
  • API Gateway
  • Feed Service
  • Post Service
  • Kafka
  • Fan-out Worker
  • Redis
  • Postgres
  • S3

Headline numbers

  • Posts / sec (avg)~3,000/sec
  • Feed read QPS~58,000/sec
  • Fan-out writes / sec~600,000/sec

Key differences

Only in Dropbox (File Sync)
None.
In both
  • Client
  • Api Gateway
  • Service
  • Storage
  • Database
  • Queue
Only in Instagram Feed
  • CDN
  • Redis

Flow shape

Dropbox (File Sync) flows
  • Upload a modified file7 steps
  • Tiny edit to a 1GB file4 steps
  • ⚠ Metadata Service is down3 steps
Instagram Feed flows
  • Post a photo (fan-out on write)7 steps
  • Open feed (precomputed timeline)5 steps
  • ⚠ Fan-out Worker is down7 steps
  • ⚠ Timeline cache flushed (Redis restart)4 steps