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A comment on An Alternative Approach to Rate Limiting. Parent comment

Re:An Alternative Approach to Rate Limiting by nullnilvoid on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @08:13PM (#14102919)
The problem with rate limiting is to distinguish a normal user from a spammer. A normal user can send more requests than usual sometimes. If a normal user gets rate-limited by mistake, you are going to get lots of upset users.
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Re:An Alternative Approach to Rate Limiting by vacri on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @08:17PM (#14102939)
Rate-limiting is also used to protect against legitimate users who have made mistakes in config (or are poorly-skilled), not just spammers. It's much better to let them know why things aren't working than actively lie about it.
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