> I’ve set the page size to 1 KiB for this database.

> That’s because I implemented a pre-fetching system that tries to detect access patterns through three separate virtual read heads and exponentially increases the request size for sequential reads.

> Since you're doing a reverse table scan my "sequential access" detection doesn't kick in.

You know, starting off with the default 4kB page size naturally adds some resistance to these kinds of failure cases. If the VFS isn't issuing many requests in parallel, I would think that setting up a page size near target_bandwidth * round_trip_time would be a better initial guess. 1kB would be appropriate for a pretty low latency-bandwidth product.