[HN Gopher] Why disaster happens at the edges: An introduction t...
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       Why disaster happens at the edges: An introduction to queue theory
        
       Author : ayewo
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2021-11-14 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thenewstack.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thenewstack.io)
        
       | thingsgoup wrote:
       | A frustrating headline. Where else would it happen? The middle?
       | Crystals fracture on their faces. Things tend to break along
       | their boundaries.
        
         | aaron695 wrote:
         | Astroworld Festival was a mainstream festival with average aged
         | festival goers dying in the main act.
         | 
         | I have no idea on your point? A lot of people are trying to
         | make Astroworld be on a boundary, I guess?
         | 
         | Step one you worry about the middle. If crystals don't also
         | fracture on the middle then it's a bad analogy. Rocks aren't
         | the same as processes.
        
         | bonestormii wrote:
         | I feel like you are understanding the title as I first
         | understood it, meaning like, "the external facing portions of
         | infrastructure". However, reading the article, it seems clear
         | that he's referring to the edges of a distribution curve (i.e.
         | Infrequent events that impact experience nonetheless).
         | 
         | From the article: "It's tempting to focus on the peak of the
         | curve. That's where most of the results are. But the edges are
         | where the action is. Events out on the tails may happen less
         | frequently, but they still happen. In digital systems, where
         | billions of events take place in a matter of seconds, one-in-a-
         | million occurrences happen all the time. And they have an
         | outsize impact on user experience."
        
       | jph wrote:
       | Queueing theory-- my notes for programmers:
       | 
       | https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
       | 
       | Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or
       | queues. We use queueing theory in our software development, for
       | purposes such as project management kanban boards, inter-process
       | communication message queues, and devops continuous deployment
       | pipelines.
        
       | spicybright wrote:
       | I'm going to sound like a jerk but there is just so much "fluff"
       | to this, including the side bar Bio on the author.
        
       | wyager wrote:
       | > The TCP protocol, for instance, generates backpressure with
       | code 503
       | 
       | Doesn't TCP typically use sliding window flow control? I'm not
       | sure what "code" is referring to in this context.
        
         | detaro wrote:
         | That seems like a typo or confusion and they actually mean
         | HTTP.
        
         | addisonj wrote:
         | I think this might be an error in the text, HTTP status code
         | 503 can be used for backpressure, which I think is what is
         | being referred too
         | 
         | But yes, TCP uses windows for back-pressure, but that isn't
         | really useful for application level backpressure as the OS
         | controls the queues sizes, so pretty much most systems have
         | their own backpressure on top.
        
           | Matthias247 wrote:
           | It's not that useless. A lot of applications these days are
           | really using HTTP. And in HTTP/1 if you read from a response
           | body from the socket (or write it), you are really already
           | using the backpressure from TCP instead of having anything on
           | top of it. With HTTP/2 and /3 that's different due to
           | mulitplexing of multiple streams on the same socket - in that
           | case there exists the additional flow control windows on top
           | of TCP. These actually make those protocols rather hard to
           | implement correctly.
        
       | mhdee740 wrote:
       | Free Download windows 11 pre-activated
       | https://programs.themicrotech.net/app/windows-11-pro-latest-...
        
       | kesor wrote:
       | TheNewStack needs more articles like this one and less articles
       | that talk about some new feature where by adding extra five lines
       | of YAML you get something or other in your Kubernetes.
        
       | polskibus wrote:
       | I would love to read more on queue theory + web applications - is
       | there anything out there worth reading for a more in-depth
       | understanding (applied to applications) but with key
       | takeways/rules of thumb presented like in this article?
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-14 23:00 UTC)