Exponential back-off is one of my favorite simple algorithms. Just remember to set a sane upper limit, you don't need them to wait hours between tries. I will

Exponential back-off is one of my favorite simple algorithms. Just remember to set a sane upper limit, you don't need them to wait hours between tries. I will sometimes use a "pseudo exponential" like 1,3,5,10,25,50,100 and hold there. Of course, if you're trying to avoid collisions on a shared resource, the classic algorithm is pretty good.