07 - Network Architecture
A deep dive into the distributed infrastructure that crawls, preserves, and serves over 4.2 million early web artifacts with deterministic integrity and global low-latency access.
System Topology
Ingest Edge
Protocol translation & validation
Crawler Mesh
Distributed headless agents
Immutable Store
WORM + cryptographic seal
Query/Index
Full-text & semantic graph
Global CDN
Edge rendering & replay
Core Components
Crawler Mesh
Decentralized fleet of headless agents running modified Netscape/NOSA and modern Chromium cores. Nodes auto-discover via mDNS and gossip protocols.
DistributedImmutable Storage
Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) object storage with Merkle tree verification. Every artifact receives a SHA-256 + RIPEMD-160 fingerprint at ingestion.
Zero-TrustIndexing Engine
Dual-index pipeline: inverted text index for raw HTML + DOM graph index for structural metadata (frames, tables, applets, MIDIs).
High-ThroughputEdge Distribution
Geo-redundant edge nodes cache rendered snapshots. Supports legacy viewport emulation (640x480, 800x600) and dial-up throttling profiles.
Low-LatencyData Flow Pipeline
1. URL Discovery & Deduplication
Inbound seeds pass through a Bloom filter cluster to eliminate redundant crawl targets. Duplicate detection uses normalized path hashing.
hash = SHA256(normalize(url) + viewport_meta)
2. Protocol Translation & Capture
Agents route requests through protocol adapters (HTTP/1.0, FTP, Gopher, WAIS). Responses are captured as raw byte streams before any parsing.
capture_mode = RAW_BYTESTREAM + DOM_TREE + ASSET_BUNDLE
3. Cryptographic Sealing
Captured payloads are chunked, hashed, and sealed into immutable storage blocks. Chain of custody is logged to an append-only ledger.
seal_id = RIPEMD160(chunk) + timestamp_utc
4. Index Ingestion & Graph Construction
Parser extracts links, meta tags, and structural attributes. Relationships are mapped into a directed acyclic graph for temporal traversal.
graph_node = { url, hash, siblings, parent, era_tags }
Security & Preservation Model
| Layer | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Transport | TLS 1.3 with mandatory certificate pinning for ingest endpoints |
| Storage | Air-gapped cold storage + 3x geo-redundant WORM replicas |
| Integrity | Merkle DAG verification on every read path; automatic tamper alerts |
| Access Control | Role-based + capability tokens; rate-limited API with sliding window |
| Legacy Safety | Sandboxed execution for applets, ActiveX proxies, and MIDI decoders |
Technology Stack
Core Runtime
- Rust (crawler agents)
- Go (control plane)
- Python 3.11 (parsing)
- WebAssembly (legacy renderers)
Data & Storage
- PostgreSQL (metadata)
- MinIO/S3 (object storage)
- Neo4j (DOM graph)
- Meilisearch (full-text)
Infrastructure
- Kubernetes (orchestration)
- Traefik (edge routing)
- Redis (dedup/cache)
- Prometheus/Grafana (telemetry)
Legacy Emulation
- Netscape 4.08 headless core
- Java 1.1 sandbox
- DOSBox (CGI binaries)
- Custom MIDI renderer
Performance Characteristics
The architecture is optimized for high ingestion throughput and deterministic read consistency. Current production metrics include:
- Ingest Rate: 12,000 pages/sec sustained across mesh nodes
- Storage Efficiency: 4.2 PB logical → 1.8 PB compressed (dedup ratio ~2.3:1)
- Read Latency: <45ms p99 for cached snapshots, <220ms for cold reconstruction
- Uptime SLA: 99.99% availability with active-active failover
Next Steps
For implementation details, proceed to 08 - Security Model or explore our Developer API Reference.