---
title: "Router Architecture (Fallbacks / Retries)"
description: "import Image from '@theme/IdealImage'; import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs'; import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';"
type: skill
canonical_url: https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/router-architecture
source: "Claudary"
difficulty: intermediate
author: "Claude Code Knowledge Pack"
date: 2026-07-10T11:46:14.646Z
license: CC-BY-4.0
attribution: "Router Architecture (Fallbacks / Retries) — Claudary (https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/router-architecture)"
---

# Router Architecture (Fallbacks / Retries)
import Image from '@theme/IdealImage'; import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs'; import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

## Overview

import Image from '@theme/IdealImage';
import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs';
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

# Router Architecture (Fallbacks / Retries)

## High Level architecture

<Image img={require('../img/router_architecture.png')} style={{ width: '100%', maxWidth: '4000px' }} />

### Request Flow 

1. **User Sends Request**: The process begins when a user sends a request to the LiteLLM Router endpoint. All unified endpoints (`.completion`, `.embeddings`, etc) are supported by LiteLLM Router.

2. **function_with_fallbacks**: The initial request is sent to the `function_with_fallbacks` function. This function wraps the initial request in a try-except block, to handle any exceptions - doing fallbacks if needed. This request is then sent to the `function_with_retries` function.


3. **function_with_retries**: The `function_with_retries` function wraps the request in a try-except block and passes the initial request to a base litellm unified function (`litellm.completion`, `litellm.embeddings`, etc) to handle LLM API calling. `function_with_retries` handles any exceptions - doing retries on the model group if needed (i.e. if the request fails, it will retry on an available model within the model group). 

4. **litellm.completion**: The `litellm.completion` function is a base function that handles the LLM API calling. It is used by `function_with_retries` to make the actual request to the LLM API.

## Legend 

**model_group**: A group of LLM API deployments that share the same `model_name`, are part of the same `model_group`, and can be load balanced across.

---

Source: [Claudary](https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com/skills/router-architecture) · https://claudary.paisolsolutions.com