Engineering / Open resources
What happens when arrivals exceed capacity?
Hypothesis: a queue absorbs a burst but does not fix a permanent processing deficit.
Local deterministic simulation. One step = one second; one worker = one attempt per step; three failures = DLQ. Does not measure production systems.
Time (s)
0
Backlog
0
Completed
0
DLQ
0
Arrived: 0 · Rejected at capacity: 0
To recover: set arrivals to zero, increase workers and advance. Failures affect deterministic IDs; the same message fails again until the configuration changes.
Protocol and observation
Use 20 arrivals/s and two workers with 0% failures. Advance ten steps: backlog is 180. Set arrivals to zero and advance until drained. The conclusion applies to this deterministic model; a real broker adds batching, latency and its own limits.