Xxtraffic
Field notes on building and running reliable internet services.
Understanding TLS 1.3 Session Resumption
June 1, 2026
Shortening the standard handshake to a solitary round trip was an achievement, but session resumption delivers the true speed advantage for returning traffic. Transmitting data right away via pre-shared keys spares high-latency cellular connections the drag of multi-step cryptographic exchanges.
Cryptographic security requires accepting deliberate operational tension. Tickets sealed under stagnant server keys jeopardize recorded sessions if exposure occurs down the line. Conscientious teams rotate session encryption material on tight hourly or daily intervals, absorbing slight CPU increments to protect forward secrecy.
The Operator's Guide to Load Testing
July 15, 2026
Synthetic load generation consistently fails to replicate production outages because artificial traffic profiles lack real-world dynamics. Sending constant, uniformly spaced queries against a solitary URI tests that specific route in isolation. Real crashes stem from synchronized client retry spikes…
Structuring DNS for Reliability
July 2, 2026
Domain resolution outages produce an awkward paradox: server instances remain perfectly healthy while clients perceive complete downtime. Insulating against platform-level registrar outages demands secondary authoritative DNS providers operating over separate routing infrastructure.…
Data Residency Basics for Global Teams
June 16, 2026
Discussions around territorial data storage tend to emerge as an afterthought, often dismissed as a basic configuration toggle to store European records locally. In reality, meeting territorial constraints is an exhaustive architectural undertaking rather than a superficial server provisioning choic…
Reading Latency Percentiles Without Fooling Yourself
October 3, 2026
Averages conceal what percentiles reveal: the request mix's tail. A service averaging fifty milliseconds can still be sending one in twenty users through a two-second odyssey, and those users - the ones hitting the cold paths, the expired sessions, the overloaded shard - are the ones filing the tick…
More reading
- What Good Observability Actually Looks Like — Operations, June 12, 2026
- Practical Notes on Postgres Connection Pooling — Data, June 10, 2026
- A Field Guide to Graceful Degradation — Engineering, May 22, 2026
About us
We cover the unglamorous middle of software: queues that back up, caches that lie, and DNS at 3 a.m. Everything is written from real operational experience.