DISTRIBUTED TRACING W3C Trace Context & Tail Sampling

One request, two distinct flows: synchronous service work and asynchronous span export

Step 1 / 12

Sync Service RPC Async Span Export Bottleneck / Alert

Stage 1: Request Origin Trace: 4bf92f35...

Request origin

A browser sends one checkout request. Nothing downstream has changed yet.

Why This Matters

A distributed trace links every downstream microservice call under a single 128-bit trace ID while exporting span telemetry out-of-band.

Trace Waterfall Timeline Total: 226ms

gateway (root)

226ms

├─ catalog

42ms

├─ inventory ||

68ms

└─ sql-db (slow)

184ms

Component Inspector State: arrived

Root Span Generator

Runtime Config & Live Controls IN:1 · OUT:1 · 12ms

Starts the root server span, generates the 128-bit trace_id, and injects the W3C traceparent header into downstream HTTP calls.

Inputs

POST /checkout

Outputs

traceparent Header

Telemetry Signals