Software engineering · Operations & workflows
Exponential backoff.
A retry strategy that multiplies the waiting time after successive failures, usually up to a limit.
Useful when immediate retries would worsen a temporary failure.
“Retry temporary failures with exponential backoff, a maximum delay, and random jitter.”
A closer look
For example, a client might wait roughly one, two, then four seconds between attempts. A cap prevents unbounded waits; jitter spreads many clients’ retries apart. Also bound the number of attempts and avoid retrying permanent failures such as invalid input.
Put it to work
“Back off between retry attempts, but stop after the request’s overall deadline.”
A useful distinction
Waiting the same duration between every attempt is fixed-delay retry, not exponential backoff.