Why making one request faster doesn't always mean the system handles more — two numbers that sound similar and often move in opposite directions.
It's tempting to treat "fast" as a single idea: a fast system responds quickly, and a fast system handles a lot of load. In reality those are two separate measurements that can be optimized independently — and some of the most effective throughput optimizations in real systems (batching, pipelining, queueing) work by deliberately making individual requests wait a little longer, not by making anything respond faster.