What is Rate Limiting and its role in reliability?
Updated Apr 28, 2026
Short answer
Protecting a system from being overwhelmed by limiting the number of requests per user/service.
Deep explanation
Intermediate reliability engineering involves handling distributed failures and defining metrics. Protecting a system from being overwhelmed by limiting the number of requests per user/service.
Real-world example
A mobile app retrying to connect to a server when the signal is weak.
Common mistakes
- Retrying indefinitely without a cap, which can crash the server when it comes back up.
Follow-up questions
- What are the three states of a Circuit Breaker?