Lesson 2: Timeouts, retries, breakers and limits under load
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Module 11 · Lesson 2 · About 55 minutes · Needs: Module 7 lesson 2 (gateway and fallback chain), Module 2 lesson 3 (residency.py), Module 3 lesson 6 (hard ceilings), Module 8 lesson 4 (idempotency keys). One hosted block of 20 short calls; everything else runs with no keyThe situation
Week 11, Monday 11 January 2027. Funmi replays 22 September through Module 7's gateway, with fallbacks now following Module 2 lesson 3's residency.py, which answers "no" for the Gemini API in every region. A timed-out request has nowhere allowed to go: it ends in degraded mode. Gareth asks why the timeout is 8 seconds. Ana asks how many extra calls retries make. Joel asks what stops one tenant's script from slowing everyone.
The running example is trace ask-0616: a Tallis Retail Group request at 13:03:26 UTC whose primary call timed out at 8,000 ms.