The broadcast time should be an order of magnitude less than the election timeout so that leaders can reliably send the heartbeat messages required to keep followers from starting elections.

Leader election is the aspect of Raft where timing is most critical. Raft will be able to elect and maintain a steady leader as long as the system satisfies the following timing requirement:

electionTimeout ≪ broadcastTime ≪ Mean Time Between Failures

Leader election is the aspect of Raft where timing is most critical. Raft will be able to elect and maintain a steady leader as long as the system satisfies the following timing requirement:

broadcastTime ≪ Mean Time Between Failures ≪ electionTimeout

Raft’s RPCs typically require the recipient to persist information to stable storage, so the broadcast time may range from 5 ms to 200 ms, and it is independent of storage technology.

Leader election is the aspect of Raft where timing is most critical. Raft will be able to elect and maintain a steady leader as long as the system satisfies the following timing requirement:

broadcastTime ≪ electionTimeout ≪ Mean Time Between Failures