4 / 5 Consistent Hashing & Rebalancing

Turning Up the Tokens

A 20-node ring currently gives each physical node 8 virtual positions. An engineer proposes raising that to 256 positions per node. Which consequences of the change are real?

A

The sorted position list grows from 160 to 5120 entries, raising client memory, membership propagation, and ring rebuild cost

B

Lookups become constant time, since a denser ring lets a client resolve a key without searching the position list

C

The spread between the most and least loaded node shrinks, because each node's share becomes an average over many independent arcs

D

A failed node's load is redistributed across many more peers instead of concentrating on one or two neighbors

E

The average fraction of keys that must move when a node joins drops well below one over the node count, since the move is split across arcs