™2 min read
randomSpread retries
herdPrevents lockstep
What it is
Jitter is a small random offset added to a retry delay. Without it, many clients that failed at the same moment retry at the same moment, forming a "thundering herd" that re-trips the very limit they are waiting on.
When to use it
Add a few hundred milliseconds of jitter on top of a Retry-After wait or a back-off step whenever many clients might retry together. For a single client it matters little; at scale it is the difference between recovering and oscillating. See handling rate limits.
Frequently asked questions
How much jitter is enough?
A few hundred milliseconds of random spread is usually plenty to break lockstep between clients.
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