Exponential Backoff (Networking)

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

Exponential backoff means waiting longer between each retry — 1 second, then 2, then 4, then 8. Instead of hammering a failing server every second, you give it increasingly more time to recover. Add some random jitter so all clients don't retry simultaneously.

Real Talk

A retry strategy where the wait time between retries increases exponentially (typically 2^n seconds). Combined with jitter (random variation), it prevents the thundering herd problem where many clients retry simultaneously after an outage, overwhelming the recovering service.

When You'll Hear This

"Use exponential backoff with jitter — without jitter, all clients retry at the exact same moment." / "AWS SDKs use exponential backoff by default for all API calls."