Back-Pressure

When one component is struggling to keep-up, the system as a whole needs to respond in a sensible way.

It is unacceptable for the component under stress to fail catastrophically the whole system.

Rather, it should communicate the fact that it is under stress to upstream components and get them to reduce the load.

This back-pressure allows systems to gracefully respond to load rather than collapse.

This mechanism will ensure that the system is resilient under load and will provide information that may allow the system itself to apply other resources to help distribute the load.