rate limiting

Intermediate 💻 Tech / IT

Definition

Restricting how many requests a user or service can make in a given timeframe, like a bouncer for your API. It prevents abuse, accidental DDoS-ing, and that one intern's infinite loop from taking down production.

Example Usage

We implemented rate limiting at 100 requests per minute per user after someone's script hit our API 10,000 times in a second.

Origin

Emerged from network traffic management and API design best practices in the 2000s

Fun Fact

Twitter's rate limits are so famously strict that entire applications have been built just to work around them, creating a cottage industry of rate limit optimization consultants.

Source: API design and network traffic management standards

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