Gateway Gus saysDistributed tracing follows one request across services using spans and a shared trace id.
A single user request may touch a gateway, three services, and a database. Tracing stitches these into one timeline: each step is a span (with start/end and metadata), all sharing a trace id propagated via headers. The result shows exactly where latency accrued and which hop failed — indispensable for debugging microservices. OpenTelemetry is the standard.
Power-ups you unlock
One request → many spans, one trace id
Trace id propagated via headers
Reveals where latency and failures occur
OpenTelemetry is the standard
Timeout Titan attacks — common mistakes
Not propagating the trace context downstream
Too many/too few spans to be useful
Tracing without sampling at high volume
Boss battleExplain how a trace id reveals which service caused a slow request.
Example code
<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
<body style="background:#06040d;color:#e6e0ff;font-family:monospace;padding:20px"><pre>trace abc123:
gateway 2ms
users-svc 8ms
db query 410ms ← the slow hop
total 420ms</pre></body></html>