[HN Gopher] Backpressure in Distributed Systems
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       Backpressure in Distributed Systems
        
       Author : andection
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2025-10-29 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.pranshu-raj.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.pranshu-raj.me)
        
       | adamzwasserman wrote:
       | Off topic: a guaranteed way to start a flame war in an automotive
       | forum is to state that there is no such thing as "backpressure"
       | and that fluid dynamics and the continuity equation fully explain
       | why restricting exhaust pipe diameter results in increased
       | performance.
       | 
       | Light the fire and then sit back and enjoy.
        
         | pryelluw wrote:
         | It gets even more fun when the back pressure is in the intake
         | side (aka boost). I was tuning a friends turbo 300zx after he
         | upgraded to a bigger turbo. At the same boost levels as before
         | the car was slower. He was confused. After a quick chat around
         | turbos, air speed, etc., I simply told him we needed to crank
         | up the boost. Some tweaks to timing and fuel maps and this
         | thing could now really fly.
        
       | mikert89 wrote:
       | I feel like backpressure was a common topic in 2010, and now
       | modern event driven system design just naturally handles this
       | issue.
        
         | convolvatron wrote:
         | its still pretty easy to screw up. how does the system you're
         | using handle back pressure and how does that behavior affect
         | other parts of your system. if you have two systems that each
         | do back pressure, are you certain that the system remains
         | closed? that is if those systems aren't coupled implicitly
         | through the scheduler or explicitly in some other way, then you
         | can balloon state or drop results between them.
        
         | titanomachy wrote:
         | Not all modern systems are event-driven. The large-scale
         | systems I've worked on have plenty of RPC.
        
         | cyberax wrote:
         | Backpressure applies to regular request-based systems just as
         | well.
         | 
         | As in: should your request handler try to do retries if one of
         | the dependent services fails?
        
         | normalaccess wrote:
         | I recall this in the form of buffer bloat.
        
         | supportengineer wrote:
         | I want to believe
        
       | PaulKeeble wrote:
       | I have often found limiting the buffer size as a simple way to
       | communicate back to producers that more work can't be taken. Then
       | what happens is all a producer strategy to drop work or wait for
       | a period of time then drop or just hold onto the work until the
       | buffer has a clear space. Its about the simplest message from
       | consumer to producer you can do and how games tend to do
       | backpressure and how Go channels work.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-29 23:01 UTC)