LaunchDarkly's Evolution from Polling to Streaming

LaunchDarkly transitioned from a polling to a streaming architecture for flag evaluations over its six years of operation. Initially, they used polling but eventually moved to streaming due to the drawbacks of frequent polling such as increased bandwidth consumption and potential server overwhelm. They first decided to buy a third-party solution before building their own streaming architecture. The hybrid model initially employed had issues with scalability and efficiency, leading them to develop personalized flag streams for individual users connecting to their service. This resulted in rapid updates when flags change with significantly less bandwidth consumption, benefiting both LaunchDarkly's customers and their end-users.