Exponential backoff.
Retry the way you re-text a silent friend: once soon, then with longer and longer gaps.
- Hello? Still me.1
Most failures are weather, not climate: a restart, a blip, a dropped packet. Weather deserves a retry.
- 2
The first pause is tiny on purpose — a glitch that lasts milliseconds should cost about that much.
- 3
Doubling stretches ten failures into minutes of waiting without anyone having to tune a schedule.
- 4
Instant retries are how a service’s own clients keep it on the floor after the original problem has passed.
- 5
Clients that failed in the same instant would retry in the same instant — the randomness breaks up the wave.
- 6
Patience needs an exit: cap the pause, budget the attempts, and report failure while the report still helps.
Semicolony semicolony.dev/eli5/exponential-backoff/comic