https://nalar.dev/tags/system-design/ Recent content in System Design on Nalar Hugo en-us Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0700 https://nalar.dev/token-bucket-rate-limiting-for-controlled-bursts/ Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0700 https://nalar.dev/token-bucket-rate-limiting-for-controlled-bursts/ <h1 id="token-bucket-rate-limiting-for-controlled-bursts">Token Bucket Rate Limiting for Controlled Bursts</h1> <p>A service may handle 100 requests per second comfortably on average while still needing to accept a short burst of 300 requests after a client reconnects. A rigid per-second limit treats those situations as the same problem: once the current window is full, otherwise acceptable work is rejected.</p> <p>Token bucket rate limiting gives you a more useful control. It separates two decisions: <strong>how quickly permission to do work is replenished</strong> and <strong>how much permission may accumulate for a burst</strong>. Once you understand those two numbers, you can reason about the limiter without depending on a particular library or platform.</p>