Rate Limiting

Limiting the # of operations that can be performed in a given amount of time.

client     server    database

   V--------- V---------
  ( )       ( )        ( )
   ----------A ----------A

Servers can rate limit the # of requests that a client can make to limit the possibility of a denial of service (DoS) attack that can be used to try to take a service down.

You can rate limit on different qualities. You can rate limit a user, an IP or some other attribute.

A distributed denial of service DDoS attack might be harder to rate limit because this type of attack takes advantage of multiple clients to send requests.

Examples:

• rack-attack