.NET Architecture & System Design Interview Question #128

What is jitter in a retry policy?

Resilience, Rate Limiting, Health Checks & Observability Senior Advanced

Quick Interview Answer

Jitter adds randomness to retry delays so large numbers of clients do not retry simultaneously after a shared failure.

Detailed Explanation

Jitter adds randomness to retry delays so large numbers of clients do not retry simultaneously after a shared failure.

Without jitter, synchronized retries can create a thundering-herd effect and delay recovery. Jitter spreads requests over time while retaining the benefits of backoff.

Code Example

Without jitter:
100 clients retry at 2.0 seconds

With jitter:
clients retry around
1.7s, 2.1s, 2.4s, 2.8s ...