Dealing With Contention medium
Why is 'Exponential Backoff' preferred over constant intervals for retries?
- A It allows the system to recover from overload. If a service is down, hammering it every 1ms keeps it down. Waiting 1s, 2s, 4s gives it breathing room to recover.
- B It is easier to implement.
- C It guarantees success.
- D It uses less memory.
Answer: A. It allows the system to recover from overload. If a service is down, hammering it every 1ms keeps it down. Waiting 1s, 2s, 4s gives it breathing room to recover.
Constant polling is aggressive. Exponential backoff reduces the call rate as the outage persists.
One system design question a day, with spaced repetition so the ones you miss come back.
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