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Rate limiting bursts with sliding window log

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#1

In the “Comparison of Rate-limiting Algorithms”, the table says that sliding window log doesn’t allow bursts. If our sliding window is empty, couldn’t a burst of requests fill the window, much like in a token bucket algorithm, a burst of requests could consume all the tokens in the bucket?

Course: Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers - Learn Interactively
Lesson: Rate Limiter Algorithms - Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers

#2

Hi Isaac,

You’re absolutely correct. In a sliding window log algorithm, if the window is empty, a burst of requests could indeed fill the window, much like in a token bucket algorithm where a burst of requests could consume all the tokens in the bucket.

We appreciate your keen observation and will update the table description to accurately reflect the behavior of the sliding window log algorithm. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

Thank you,