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[#186] Resolve "queue and resend rate-limited messages"

aguestuser requested to merge 186-queue-and-resend-rate-limited-messages into master

Closes #186 (closed)

Satisfies #Behavior and #Implementation Notes specs from #186 (closed), which I am reproducing below b/c i'm a little to tired to write a proper MR report! :/


Context

  • On channels with large memberships, we are starting to observe somewhat frequent occurences of rate-limiting by signal.
  • When messages are rate-limited, signald does not attempt to resend them, it just drops them and emits an error message.
  • This means that ~5% of intended recipients of some messages don't get them! Obviously really bad!

Value

  • As a signalboost admin
  • I want to know that every message I send to my channel will reach every subscriber
  • So that I don't have to worry about who knows what, or think twice before using signalboost to send important information

Behavior

TLDR

enqueue rate-limited messages for resending with exponential backoff to ensure messages get through, but stop attempting to resend after a certain threshold of attempts have been made.

resending

GIVEN a message that has failed to send due to rate limit error for the first time

  • THEN signalboost will notify admins it has experienced a rate limit error and will attempt to resend in 2 seconds
  • AND THEN signalboost will attempt to resend the message 2 seconds later

exponential backoff

GIVEN a message that has been rate-limited for the Nth time

  • THEN signalboost will notify admins of next attempted resend
  • AND THEN signalboost will attempt to resend it in 2^N seconds

resend canceling

GIVEN a message that has been rate limited 8 times [1]

  • THEN signalboost will notify admins that message will not be resent anymore
  • THEN signalboost will not attempt to resend the message anymore

[1] ie: 8.5 minutes have elapsed since the first send attempt and the last resend delay was 4.25 minutes (256 sec) long

Implementation Details

  • create resendInterval and maxResendInterval config vars
    • set resendInterval to 2 sec and maxResentInterval to 256 sec (2^8 sec, 4.25 min)
  • create a resendQueue variable that is local to the dispatcher.run module and closed over by the (already existing) detectRateLimitedMessage function
    • resendQueue is a hashmap with keys hash(messageBody + username + recipientNumber) and values ResendableMessage
    • hash is some appropriately fast hashing algorithm. possibly sha1, possibly something simpler
    • ResendableMessage is an object with fields sdMessage: SdMessage and lastResendInterval: number
  • every time that detectRateLimitedMessage detects a rate limited message from signald it:
    • takes the hash of the sender, recipient, and content of the SdMessage in the request field of the erorr message
    • tries to find an entry in the resendQueue matching that hash
  • IF NO ENTRY MATCHING HASH, it:
    • enqueus the message for resending in 2 seconds
    • creates a new entry in the resendQueue using the (already taken) hash as the key, and setting the lastResendInterval field of the ResendableMessage in the value to 2
  • IF ENTRY MATCHING HASH FOUND, it:
    • checks to see if the lastResendInverval is >= maxResendInterval
    • IF EXCEEDS MAX: it:
      • does not attempt to resend the message
      • deletes the corresponding entry from the resendQueue
    • IF DOES NOT EXCEED MAX, it:
      • multiplies the lastResendInterval by 2, producing newResendInterval
      • queues the failed message for resending in newResendInterval seconds (using wait(newResendIterval).then(...))
      • mutates the lastResendInterval value of the given message's entry in the resendQueue to the value of newResendInterval
Edited by aguestuser

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