What is the purpose of a backoff strategy in API rate limiting and how does it help CDX integrations?

• A. It instantly retries without delay.
• B. It gradually reduces request rate after failures to avoid overwhelming the service.
• C. It blocks all requests indefinitely after a single failure.
• D. It increases request rate to quickly recover.

Answer: (B)

Backoff strategies are used when an API call fails or is rate-limited to avoid hammering the service. The idea is to reduce the request rate after failures, letting the server breathe and recover instead of retrying instantly at full speed. This typically uses increasing wait times between attempts (often exponential) and may include random jitter to prevent many clients from retrying in sync. For CDX integrations, this approach keeps data flows reliable by staying within quota limits, reducing the chance of blocks from aggressive retrying, and giving downstream services time to come back online. When a retry finally goes through, the overall integration remains healthy and avoids flooding the system with traffic that could amplify the problem.