CAP is sometimes presented as Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance: pick 2 out of 3. Unfortunately, putting it this way is misleading [32] because network partitions are a kind of fault, so they aren’t something about which you have a choice: they will happen whether you like it or not [38]. At times when the network is working correctly, a system can provide both consistency (linearizability) and total availability. When a network fault occurs, you have to choose between either linearizability or total availability. Thus, a better way of phrasing CAP would be either Consistent or
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