In a world of highly-distributed systems and microservices, applications need to communicate with reliable speed. In the quest for ever-faster messaging, a number of techniques have emerged aimed at gaining the lowest-possible latency when processing network traffic. 

In this talk, we will explore these techniques: why they work, and how they are utilized by current state-of-the-art event-processing frameworks. Heading further down the stack, we will then take a look at how to optimize the operating system components involved in getting our application data from the network fabric to our business code.