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Get to know the power of rate limiting in securing IT systems and enhancing user experience, learning more about the techniques and real-world applications.

Rate Limiting: Benefits, Types, and Techniques

There is a reason organizations must keep actively bolstering the resilience of their IT systems. Uncontrolled request volume to servers can create security threats and compromise user experience.

This is the moment where rate limiting steps up as a vital tool, effectively managing incoming requests and fostering a secure, stable environment.

This guide will give you an overview of the benefits as well as common implementations of rate limiting. This knowledge can help strengthen your infrastructure and mitigate potential risks.

What is Rate Limiting?

Rate limiting is a technique that controls the frequency at which users and programs can access or interact with a particular service or application. It is employed to ensure a balance between security, performance, and user experience in the digital landscape.

When rate limits are reached, different behaviors can occur depending on the implementation.

Some systems may ignore or discard excess requests, while others might place them in a queue to be processed later. This versatility ensures that rate limiting can be tailored to the specific needs of an organization.

Rate limiting plays a significant role in many IT systems. Image: Freepik

Many people have already encountered rate limiting in their daily lives, perhaps without even realizing it.

Take, for instance, the Twitter API. It sets restrictions on how often developers can request data. These limits are designed to prevent abuse and maintain a reliable user experience.

Similarly, identity and access management providers like Okta also enforce rate limits on their services to protect the platform and maintain optimal performance.

How Rate Limiting Works

Rate limiting often begins with tracking IP addresses. A system can monitor the number of requests from a specific IP within a given timeframe and regulate the time gap between requests.

By doing so, the system can temporarily ignore requests from a source, effectively telling it to slow down. Typically, a safety margin is incorporated into rate limiting strategies to halt requests before they reach a critical threshold.

However, relying solely on IP addresses has its limitations, as multiple users may share a single IP, or a user may change their IP address to bypass restrictions.

To further enhance security, rate limiting can also be applied to login attempts. For example, after several failed attempts, a user may be temporarily locked out of their account.

This method complements IP-based rate limiting, making it more difficult for bad actors to gain unauthorized access to accounts.

Benefits of Employing Rate Limiting

Improving Security

Rate limiting contributes significantly to an organization’s overall security. By controlling the flow of incoming requests, it forms a barrier against various types of cyberattacks.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, for example, attempt to overwhelm a system with a massive volume of requests. With rate limiting in place, these attacks become much less effective, as the system can cap the number of requests it processes.

Another security concern that rate limiting addresses is brute force and credential stuffing attacks.

Cybercriminals use these methods to gain unauthorized access to user accounts by rapidly attempting various combinations of usernames and passwords. By restricting the frequency of login attempts, rate limiting frustrates attackers and helps maintain the confidentiality of user data.

Preventing Abuse

Aside from boosting security, rate limiting offers protection against various forms of abuse.

Web scraping is a prime example; it involves automated tools extracting data from websites without permission. While some scraping may be innocuous, excessive scraping can degrade website performance and harm the user experience.

By implementing rate limiting, organizations can control the rate at which requests are made, ensuring that their systems are not overwhelmed by web scraping or other abusive practices.

Reducing Cost

Rate limiting can effectively reduce costs associated with server maintenance and resource allocation. Image: Freepik

Managing costs is a critical aspect of running an efficient IT infrastructure, and rate limiting plays a vital role in this process.

Implementing rate limiting enables organizations to effectively manage quotas and limit access as needed, optimizing the allocation of resources and reducing overall costs.

By ensuring fair and reasonable use of resources, it also prevents resource starvation, a situation in which some users consume a disproportionate amount of resources, leaving others underserved.

Enhancing User Experience

User experience is paramount in the digital world, and rate limiting can help ensure that systems operate smoothly and efficiently.

Complex, interconnected systems require careful management of data and message flows to avoid bottlenecks and breakdowns. Even powerful systems can succumb to heavy traffic and attacks without proper safeguards in place.

Rate limiting helps achieve this balance by controlling the frequency of requests and ensuring that each component has the capacity to handle incoming traffic.

Types of Rate Limiting

User-Based Rate Limiting

This approach focuses on controlling the number of requests made by each user or client, typically identified by their IP address, API key, or authentication token. It enables organizations to manage access to resources on a per-user basis.

Location-Based Rate Limiting

Geographic rate limiting takes a broader approach by restricting the number of requests based on the location of the users or clients.

Organizations can manage resource allocation and system load by region, which can be helpful in mitigating region-specific cyberattacks or complying with local regulations.

Server-Based Rate Limiting

Server rate limiting is concerned with protecting an organization’s infrastructure by controlling the overall rate of requests that a server or service can handle.

This approach is designed to prevent the overloading of the system and ensure its stability, regardless of the source of the incoming requests.

Rate Limiting Techniques

Fixed Window

The fixed-window algorithm is a straightforward rate limiting technique that divides time into equal intervals or “windows.”

It tracks the number of requests made within each window, and if the limit is reached, additional requests are denied until the next window begins. This approach is easy to implement and understand, making it a popular choice for many applications.

Sliding Window

The sliding-window algorithm is an improvement over the fixed-window technique. It allows for a smoother distribution of requests by continuously shifting the window over time rather than resetting it at fixed intervals.

The algorithm keeps track of the number of requests made within the current window. But it also factors in a portion of the previous window to ensure a more even distribution of requests.

By avoiding the request spikes associated with the fixed-window algorithm, the sliding-window approach provides a more consistent rate of incoming traffic.

Rate limiting offers various methods to manage incoming traffic. Image: Freepik

Leaky Bucket

The leaky bucket algorithm functions like a literal leaky bucket, controlling the flow of incoming requests.

As requests come in, they fill the “bucket” up to its capacity. Once the bucket is full, excess requests are discarded, simulating the overflow of a real bucket. This algorithm ensures a steady, controlled flow of requests, preventing sudden bursts of traffic.

Token Bucket

The token bucket algorithm offers a more adaptable and dynamic approach to rate limiting.

In this technique, tokens are added to a “bucket” at a fixed rate. When a request arrives, it consumes a token, and if no tokens are available, the request is either denied or delayed.

The token bucket algorithm allows for short-term increases in request volume as long as the long-term rate stays within the specified limit. It’s well-suited for situations where traffic patterns are less predictable or more dynamic.

Summary

Rate limiting is a powerful technique for safeguarding IT systems and a fundamental component to manage and protect resources effectively.

However, it’s not a silver bullet. A complete cybersecurity approach should incorporate rate limiting alongside other robust solutions.

If you have any inquiries about implementing rate limiting in your organization, don’t hesitate to contact our team for expert guidance and support.