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Independent processes with fixed intervals naturally converge into synchronized waves after any shared event (deploys, network partitions, cache flushes), creating traffic spikes. Adding jitter to these intervals is a one-line fix that spreads load without changing average rates or requiring coordination.
- Fixed intervals act as attractors: after any event that resets all clients simultaneously, they stay synchronized forever, creating predictable spikes instead of distributed load
- Exponential backoff without jitter keeps retry storms aligned—AWS measurements show full jitter (random delay across the entire backoff window) recovers faster than backoff alone because synchronized waves prevent the dependency from recovering
- Most systems have hidden synchronized intervals nobody thinks about: cron jobs at midnight, health checks from rolling restarts, reconnect logic after disconnects, token refresh—jitter on these costs almost nothing but cuts peak load dramatically