Rate Limiting and Throttling
Learn how rate limiting protects systems from abuse and overload, including the token bucket and sliding window algorithms.
Why Rate Limit?
Rate limiting caps how many requests a client can make in a time window. It protects a system from abuse, accidental floods, and runaway clients.
- Stops brute-force and scraping attacks
- Ensures fair sharing among clients
- Protects backends from overload
Rate Limiting vs Throttling
The terms overlap but differ slightly: rate limiting rejects requests over a hard cap, while throttling often slows or queues excess requests rather than rejecting them outright.
All lessons in this course
- Authentication & Authorization
- Data Encryption & Privacy
- DDoS Protection & Firewalls
- Rate Limiting and Throttling