System Design · Middle · Question 21 of 75
Why add random jitter to exponential retry backoff?
- ✓Correct answer: So clients don't retry at the same moment
- 2So requests complete faster on average
- 3To bypass server rate limiting
Explanation
If a service goes down and comes back, all clients with identical backoff hit it simultaneously (thundering herd). The random component spreads retries over time. This is covered in detail in an AWS Architecture Blog article.