Software Engineering
07 Sep 2026
11 min read
Circuit Breakers for Failing Dependencies
A dependency can fail in a way that is worse than an immediate error. It may accept connections but respond slowly, time out repeatedly, or reject nearly every request while callers continue sending more work. If your application keeps calling that dependency for every incoming request, the original failure can consume connection pools, worker capacity, and latency budgets in your own service. Retrying every failure can increase the pressure further.