# Overview of Circuit Breaker Technique #flashcard An approach for handling cascading failures in a system. Circuit breakers protect your system by: 1. The circuit breaker monitors for failures when calling external services 2. When failures exceed a threshold, the circuit "trips" to an open state 3. While open, requests immediately fail without attempting the actual call 4. After a timeout period, the circuit transitions to a "half-open" state 5. A test request determine whether to close the circuit or keep it open <!--ID: 1751507777731--> # Key Considerations # Pros # Cons # Use Cases - Prevents cascading failures when a shared resources goes down (like a database) - External API calls to third-party services - Service-to-service communication in microservices - Resource-intensive operations that might time out - Any network call that could fail or become slow # Related Topics