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An operation that depends on a correct order, such as granting access only after the change that authorized it, can act on stale information.
Operations relying on correct ordering, like authorization checks, can act on stale data when clocks disagree. ✦ AI generated
Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
An operation that depends on a correct order, such as granting access only after the change that authorized it, can act on stale information.
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Each machine can read time from its own hardware clock, but those clocks do not stay aligned. Network Time Protocol (NTP) tries to bring the clocks together, but it cannot eliminate the problem.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 90%On a single computer, every event can be measured against one clock, so the order of the events is never in doubt. However, a distributed system, where work is spread across many independent machines, lacks a shared reference.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 85%If events on different machines are ordered by comparing timestamps, a small difference in the wrong direction can change the result.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 85%