Infrastructure Engineering: Systems, Networking, Databases & the Internet
Network architecture, internet protocols, database and systems design, and the infrastructure engineering decisions that determine whether real production systems hold up under load.
Why Bank Architecture Determines Resilience More Than Size
1. Size Was Once Mistaken for Stability For most of modern banking history, stability was assumed to increase with size. The thinking was the bigger you are, the more you should care, the more resources you can apply to problems. Larger banks had more capital, more infrastructure, and more people. In a pre-cloud world, this […]
Read more →host Command DNS Queries on macOS: 9 Examples
1. Find a list of IP addresses linked to a domain To find the IP address for a particular domain, simply pass the target domain name as an argument after the host command. For a comprehensive lookup using the verbose mode, use -a or -v flag option. The -a option is used to find all Domain records and Zone […]
Read more →Fix DNS Issues Using dig and whois on Mac OS X
When debugging DNS issues its important to verify the local DNS response with the authoritive DNS nameserver. With dig we can directly query the authoritative name servers for a domain, these are the DNS servers that hold the authoritative records for the domains DNS zone; the source of truth. If a correct response is received […]
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NTTFB: Net Time to First Byte Explained and Why It Matters
Andrew Baker · February 2026 · andrewbaker.ninja 1 The Problem with TTFB Time to First Byte has been the go to diagnostic for server responsiveness since the early days of web performance engineering. Google’s own web.dev guidance describes TTFB as measuring the elapsed time between the start of navigation and when the first byte of […]
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ESB vs Kafka: Why Microservices Are Replacing Enterprise Buses
1. Introduction The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) once promised to be the silver bullet for enterprise integration. Organizations invested millions in platforms like MuleSoft, IBM Integration Bus, Oracle Service Bus, and TIBCO BusinessWorks, believing they would solve all their integration challenges. Today, these same organizations are discovering that their ESB has become their biggest architectural […]
Read more →Monitor Critical DNS Records for Changes Using Batch Script
If you have tier 1 services that are dependant on a few DNS records, then you may want a simple batch job to monitor these dns records for changes or deletion. The script below contains an example list of DNS entries (replace these records for the ones you want to monitor).
Read more →How to Find Who Mentions You Online Using Google
If you publish online, you should periodically search for yourself, not out of ego but out of discipline. The internet is an echo system, and if you do not measure where your ideas travel, you are operating blind. You want to know who is linking to you, who is quoting you, who is criticising you, […]
Read more →nmap Vulners Script: Quick Vulnerability Scanning on macOS
This is a very short post to help anyone quickly setup vulnerability checking for a site they own (and have permission to scan). I like the vulners scripts as they cover a lot of basic ground quickly with one script.
Read more →Fix FOIT with font-display: swap to Boost Core Web Vitals
Stop Waiting for Fonts Quick Guide to font-display: swap on macOS Your website might be secretly blocking page renders while it waits for fancy custom fonts to load. This invisible delay tanks your Core Web Vitals and frustrates users. The fix is simple: font-display: swap. Here’s how to audit your sites and fix it in […]
Read more →Browser Curl with Playwright: Load Testing Guide
Modern sites often block plain curl. Using a real browser engine (Chromium via Playwright) gives you true browser behavior: real TLS/HTTP2 stack, cookies, redirects, and JavaScript execution if needed. This post mirrors the functionality of the original browser_curl.sh wrapper but implemented with Playwright. It also includes an optional Selenium mini-variant at the end. What this […]
Read more →WordPress on AWS Graviton: Deploy & Migrate in Minutes
Running WordPress on ARM-based Graviton instances delivers up to 40% better price-performance compared to x86 equivalents. This guide provides production-ready scripts to deploy an optimised WordPress stack in minutes, plus everything you need to migrate your existing site. Why Graviton for WordPress? Graviton3 processors deliver: The t4g.small instance (2 vCPU, 2GB RAM) at ~$12/month handles […]
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AI vs Salesforce: The True Cost of Enterprise CRM in 2025
When a $3 API call can replace a $165 per user per month platform, the financial mathematics of enterprise software fundamentally change. 1. The New Economics of Customer Engagement Something fundamental shifted in 2024. The capabilities that once justified six and seven figure enterprise software contracts became commoditised overnight. Not gradually, through slow competitive erosion, […]
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