Rate Limiting
term_id: rate_limiting
Category: engineering_practice
Definition
Rate limiting protects AI services and APIs from abuse, overload, and excessive resource consumption. It ensures fair usage among users and maintains system stability by capping throughput. Common strategies include token bucket, leaky bucket, and fixed window counters. In AI deployments, it is critical for managing inference costs and preventing Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on sensitive models.
Summary
An engineering control mechanism that restricts the number of requests a client can make to a service within a specific time window.
Key Concepts
- API protection
- Throughput control
- Fair usage policy
- System stability
Use Cases
- LLM API gateway management
- Preventing DDoS attacks
- Managing cloud compute costs