High Level Design

Building the blueprint for a scalable, distributed rate limiting system.

Where Should The Rate Limiter Live?

Placement determines how traffic is protected and how much load your API servers must handle.

Option A: Middleware

Gateway Layer

Pros

  • Unified Policy
  • Better Security

Cons

  • Extra Hop

Option B: Application

Internal Layer

Pros

  • Low Latency

Cons

  • Scaling Complexity

For this deep dive, we'll implement Option A: A dedicated middleware service placed before our API servers.