gRPC Stream Backpressure with Flow Control Windows

Unbounded stream consumers eventually fail in one of three ways: memory pressure, queue thrashing, or timeout amplification.

Core Rule

Apply backpressure at every stage, not just network transport.

// Bounded application channel protects process memory.
msgs := make(chan *pb.Event, 1024)

Implementation Notes

• Tune HTTP/2 window sizes with realistic payloads.
• Use bounded worker pools for downstream processing.
• Propagate cancellation aggressively.

Throughput without backpressure is borrowed time.