Networks & Defense
Rate Limiting
Also: throttling, request quota
Capping how many requests a client may make in a window of time.
In more detail
A rate limit protects a service from overload by a flood, a buggy script or an attacker. Limits per IP address can be bypassed by a botnet and can block many real users behind one shared address; limits per account or API key are stricter but only cover authenticated traffic. Pair limits with timeouts and a ceiling on work per request.