Backpressure

Definition

Mechanisms that slow producers or shed load when consumers or downstream systems are overloaded.

Why it matters

Prevents cascading failures and stabilizes systems under bursty load.

Common pitfalls

• Unbounded queues hiding overload until failure.
• Retrying aggressively without limits or jitter.

References

• Reactive systems patterns
• playbooks/stateless-microservices/index.md