Explain what happens when opening a website
Company: Mercor
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Software Engineering Fundamentals
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
When a user types `https://www.amazon.com` into a browser and presses Enter, what happens end-to-end?
Cover the major steps across the browser, DNS, TCP/TLS, HTTP(S), CDNs/load balancers, server-side handling, and how the page is rendered in the browser.
Overview: This question evaluates understanding of the end-to-end web request lifecycle, including DNS resolution, TCP/TLS handshakes, HTTP(S) exchanges, CDN and load balancer behavior, server-side handling, and the browser rendering pipeline.