#2770 changed histogram buckets to match Prometheus SDK values. However, the OTel values are 1000 times bigger. That made sense when OTel semantic conventions recommended milliseconds for durations compared to Prometheus's seconds.
OTel recently decided to change its semantic conventions to use seconds for durations to be in line with Prometheus. The side effect of not changing the bucket bounds default at the same time is now the buckets are too large. The smallest bucket captures everything that takes 0-5 seconds instead of 0-5 milliseconds.
I guess most histograms measure short durations, e.g. less than 10 seconds. With the current defaults, those histograms will need to override the bucket bounds because they're not appropriate. If most people need to change the defaults then maybe they aren't the right defaults.
Should the bucket sizes reduce by 1000?
#2770 changed histogram buckets to match Prometheus SDK values. However, the OTel values are 1000 times bigger. That made sense when OTel semantic conventions recommended milliseconds for durations compared to Prometheus's seconds.
OTel recently decided to change its semantic conventions to use seconds for durations to be in line with Prometheus. The side effect of not changing the bucket bounds default at the same time is now the buckets are too large. The smallest bucket captures everything that takes 0-5 seconds instead of 0-5 milliseconds.
I guess most histograms measure short durations, e.g. less than 10 seconds. With the current defaults, those histograms will need to override the bucket bounds because they're not appropriate. If most people need to change the defaults then maybe they aren't the right defaults.
Should the bucket sizes reduce by 1000?