Fallacies of Distributed Computing

Series Archive

I'm taking a look at the classic list of common, errant assumptions about distributed computing: How do the fallacies express themselves today, and how do they continue to help us develop modern distributed systems?

2024

04.26 Bandwidth is Infinite ... ly TroublesomeThe bandwidth of the world-wide web has increased dramatically, but so has its demand. There's an abolute limit to how much data we can all transmit, and working around that requires dilligence.
03.29 Latency is Zero and the Speed of Light is Getting FasterLatency is a constant and unavoidable fact of nature, but we can plan for it, work around it, and respond to it.
02.21 The Network is Unreliable and Reliability is ScaryIndeed the network is unreliable, and this is especially concerning for modern, distributed system. The catch though is that it never can be 100% reliable, and we can't create systems that perfectly compensate for this.