During a county API deploy, clients receive HTTP 502 and 503 responses while health checks flap. How should the team interpret these status codes relative to application logic bugs?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Five-oh-two and five-oh-three are the 'middleman is unhappy' lights—gateway can't reach a healthy upstream or capacity is gone. Don't assume the app threw a NullPointer just because the edge returned those codes.
Full Explanation
HTTP 502 Bad Gateway and 503 Service Unavailable typically signal that a reverse proxy, load balancer, or API gateway cannot obtain a valid response from an upstream, or that the service is temporarily unavailable. They differ from 4xx client errors and from application-specific business fault codes. Teams should inspect backend health, deploy overlap, and capacity rather than treating 502/503 as proof of a specific code exception or certificate/DNS root cause.