Rate Limiting and API Gateways
Protect an API from abuse with a Redis-backed rate limiter that stays consistent across multiple server instances, understand fixed vs sliding window algorithms, and see where a dedicated API gateway fits in front of all of this.
Prerequisites: REST API Fundamentals with Node.js; Authentication and Session Management (for per-user limits); Redis running locally.
Targeted versions: express-rate-limit + rate-limit-redis (current major versions); verified against npmjs.com package pages, mid-2026.
You'll add rate limiting to your API that actually works once you run more than one instance of it — the naive in-memory approach silently breaks the moment you scale horizontally — and you'll see how the algorithm you choose changes what "too many requests" actually means at the boundary of a time window.
The in-memory limiter problem
Share state across instances with Redis
Limit by identity, not just IP
Fixed window vs sliding window
Secret Mission: where a gateway takes over
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