Rate Limiting

Rate limiting is an essential security mechanism that controls the number of connections per IP address within a given time interval.

Configuration

To enable rate limiting, add the following configuration to your config.yaml file:

security:
  rateLimiter:
    # Maximum number of requests allowed per time window
    requestLimit: 10
    
    # Duration of the time window (in seconds)
    windowDuration: 1
    
    # Block duration after limit exceeded (in seconds)
    blockDuration: 300

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Default Value
requestLimit	Maximum number of requests	10
windowDuration	Window duration (seconds)	1
blockDuration	Block duration (seconds)	300

Operation

1. A sliding window is maintained for each IP address
2. Each new connection increments a counter
3. If the counter exceeds requestLimit within the window:
   • The IP is blocked for blockDuration
   • New connections are rejected
   • An error message is sent to the client

DDoS Protection

Rate limiting is part of the DDoS protection strategy along with:

• IP filtering ### NOT IMPLEMENTED ###
• Subnet limitations ### NOT IMPLEMENTED ###
• Adaptive thresholds ### NOT IMPLEMENTED ###
• Temporary blacklist ### NOT IMPLEMENTED ###

Configuration Examples

Basic Configuration

security:
  rateLimiter:
    requestLimit: 10
    windowDuration: 1

Strict Configuration

security:
  rateLimiter:
    requestLimit: 5
    windowDuration: 1
    blockDuration: 600

Monitoring - Not implemented

The rate limiter will expose metrics in the future:

• Number of blocked connections
• Currently blocked IPs
• Block rate
• Connection spikes

See Monitoring for more details.