Thomas Iffland

Have you ever wondered what happens under the hood when your Kafka client talks to the broker? In this session, we’ll take a deep dive into the Kafka wire protocol - the low-level language that powers communication between Kafka components. We’ll break it down step by step to make it easy to understand. You’ll see how requests and responses are structured and get a clear picture of how everything fits together. To make it even more concrete, we’ll look at code examples that show how to build a Kafka request byte by byte. By the end of this session, you’ll have a solid grasp of the Kafka wire protocol, giving you the tools to create your own Kafka client - if you wish!