Retry Patterns That Actually Work: Exponential Backoff, Jitter, and Dead Letter Queues

Retry Patterns That Actually Work: Exponential Backoff, Jitter, and Dead Letter Queues Network call fails. You retry immediately. It fails again. You retry in a tight loop. You DDoS your own service. Exponential Backoff Wait longer between each retry: 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s. async function retry < T > ( fn : () => Promise < T > , maxRetries = 5 ): Promise < T > { for ( let i = 0 ; i < maxRetries ; i ++ ) { try { return await fn (); } catch ( err ) { if ( i === maxRetries - 1 ) throw err ; const delay = Math . min ( 1000 * Math . pow ( 2 , i ), 30000 ); const jitter = delay * ( 0.5 + Math . random () * 0.5 ); await new Promise ( r => setTimeout ( r , jitter )); } } } Why Jitter Matters Without jitter, 1000 clients all retry at the same exponential intervals. They stampede the server simultaneously. Jitter randomizes the retry time so clients spread out naturally. What NOT to Retry Retry: 429 (rate limit), 503 (overloaded), timeout, connection refused. Do NOT retry: 400 (bad request), 401 (