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API Rate Limiting & Scalability Patterns · Lesson

Global vs. Per-Service Rate Limiting

Understand the differences and interplay between global rate limits applied at the edge and specific limits for individual microservices.

Global vs. Per-Service Limits

APIs often handle diverse traffic, from general users to specific internal systems. To manage this, we need different rate limiting strategies.

Today, we'll explore two key approaches: global rate limiting and per-service rate limiting. Understanding their differences helps build robust and fair APIs.

Guarding the Gates Globally

Global rate limiting is applied at the very edge of your system, before requests even reach individual services. Think of it as a bouncer at the club entrance.

  • It protects your entire infrastructure.
  • Often implemented in API Gateways, load balancers, or edge proxies.
  • Focuses on overall request volume to prevent system overload or DDoS attacks.

All lessons in this course

  1. API Gateway Integration Patterns
  2. Global vs. Per-Service Rate Limiting
  3. Dynamic Rate Limit Configuration
  4. Distributed Rate Limiting with Redis
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