What happens to an external service — is it unavailable or responding slowly?

If an external service is unavailable or responds slowly, it can lead to delays and errors in the application's operation. In such cases:

• Check logs and metrics to understand the nature of the problem — timeouts, connection errors, or slow responses.
• Use timeout mechanisms and retry strategies with exponential backoff to minimize impact.
• If necessary, implement fallback logic or caching to ensure operation without the external service.
• Notify the support team of the external service and monitor their status.

For example, in automated tests, you can simulate the unavailability of the service and verify that the system responds correctly to such situations.