The Fallacies of Distributed Systems

Overview

The eight fallacies of distributed computing are a classic checklist of assumptions that go wrong in distributed systems. They are general distributed-systems lore, not an Apache Kafka document, and Apache does not say that Kafka's design was derived from them. They are still a useful lens, because each one points at a problem that Kafka's documentation addresses with a concrete mechanism: replication for machine and network failures, batching to trade a little latency for throughput, compression, security features, leader election when brokers change, and quotas and ACLs for shared clusters.

Analogy

Key configuration

# The 8 fallacies of distributed computing
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous

Production tip

Sources

• 21 years and counting of 'eight fallacies of distributed computing' (APNIC) (opens in a new tab)
• Design (4.2 documentation) (opens in a new tab)
• Introduction (4.2 documentation) (opens in a new tab)
• Multi-tenancy (4.2 documentation) (opens in a new tab)
• Compatibility (4.2 documentation) (opens in a new tab)
• Basic Kafka operations (4.2 documentation) (opens in a new tab)

Checked against Kafka 4.2 documentation on Oct 2026. Draft: not yet reviewed by a Kafka specialist. Releases move on, so confirm against the current documentation before you act on a number.