The eight fallacies of distributed computing: Why they still matter after 21 years

Summary

This article revisits the eight fallacies of distributed computing, originally formulated in the 1990s, which describe common but incorrect assumptions developers and network administrators make about networks. These fallacies include beliefs that the network is reliable, latency is zero, bandwidth is infinite, the network is secure, topology doesn't change, there is one administrator, transport cost is zero, and the network is homogeneous. The article explains why each fallacy persists despite decades of evidence to the contrary, and discusses their continued relevance in modern cloud computing, microservices, and distributed systems design.