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Rate Limiting Advanced

Kong Enterprise only: This plugin is only available with a Kong Enterprise subscription.
Please inquire about Kong Enterprise by contacting us - or start a free trial today.

The Rate Limiting Advanced plugin for Kong Enterprise is a re-engineered version of the incredibly popular Kong Rate Limiting plugin, with greatly enhanced configuration options and performance.

Terminology

  • plugin: a plugin executing actions inside Kong before or after a request has been proxied to the upstream API.
  • Service: the Kong entity representing an external upstream API or microservice.
  • Route: the Kong entity representing a way to map downstream requests to upstream services.
  • Consumer: the Kong entity representing a developer or machine using the API. When using Kong, a Consumer only communicates with Kong which proxies every call to the said upstream API.
  • Credential: a unique string associated with a Consumer, also referred to as an API key.
  • upstream service: this refers to your own API/service sitting behind Kong, to which client requests are forwarded.
  • API: a legacy entity used to represent your upstream services. Deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.

Configuration

Enabling the plugin on a Service

Configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/services/{service}/plugins \
    --data "name=rate-limiting-advanced"
  • service: the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Route

Configure this plugin on a Route with:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/routes/{route_id}/plugins \
    --data "name=rate-limiting-advanced"
  • route_id: the id of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Consumer

You can use the http://localhost:8001/plugins endpoint to enable this plugin on specific Consumers:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/plugins \
    --data "name=rate-limiting-advanced" \
    --data "consumer_id={consumer_id}"

Where consumer_id is the id of the Consumer we want to associate with this plugin.

You can combine consumer_id and service_id

in the same request, to furthermore narrow the scope of the plugin.

Enabling the plugin on an API

If you are using an older version of Kong with the legacy API entity (deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.), you can configure this plugin on top of such an API by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://kong:8001/apis/{api}/plugins \
    --data "name=rate-limiting-advanced"
  • api: either id or name of the API that this plugin configuration will target.

Global plugins

All plugins can be configured using the http://kong:8001/plugins/ endpoint. A plugin which is not associated to any Service, Route or Consumer (or API, if you are using an older version of Kong) is considered "global", and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:

form parameterdefaultdescription
nameThe name of the plugin to use, in this case rate-limiting-advanced
service_idThe id of the Service which this plugin will target.
route_idThe id of the Route which this plugin will target.
enabledtrueWhether this plugin will be applied.
consumer_idThe id of the Consumer which this plugin will target.
api_idThe id of the API which this plugin will target. Note: The API Entity is deprecated in favor of Services since CE 0.13.0 and EE 0.32.
config.limit

One of more request per window to apply
config.window_size

One more more window sizes to apply (defined in seconds)
config.identifier

consumer

How to define the rate limit key. Can be ip, credential, or consumer.
config.dictionary_name

kong_rate_limiting_counters

The shared dictionary where counters will be stored until the next sync cycle
config.sync_rate

How often to sync counter data to the central data store. A value of 0 results in synchronous behavior; a value of -1 ignores sync behavior entirely and only stores counters in node memory. A value greater than 0 will sync the counters in that many number of seconds.
config.namespace
optional

random string

The rate limiting library namespace to use for this plugin instance. Counter data and sync configuration is shared in a namespace.
config.strategy

cluster

The sync strategy to use; cluster and redis are supported
config.redis.host
semi-optional

Host to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined
config.redis.port
semi-optional

Port to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined
config.redis.timeout
semi-optional

2000

Connection timeout to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined
config.redis.password
semi-optional

Password to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined. If undefined, no AUTH commands are sent to Redis.
config.redis.database
semi-optional

0

Database to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined
config.redis.sentinel_master
semi-optional

Sentinel master to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined. Defining this value implies using Redis Sentinel.
config.redis.sentinel_role
semi-optional

Sentinel role to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined. Defining this value implies using Redis Sentinel.
config.redis.sentinel_addresses
semi-optional

Sentinel addresses to use for Redis connection when the redis strategy is defined. Defining this value implies using Redis Sentinel.
config.window_type

sliding

This sets the time window to either sliding or fixed

Note: Redis configuration values are ignored if the cluster strategy is used.

Note: PostgreSQL 9.5+ is required when using the cluster strategy with postgres as the backing Kong cluster data store. This requirement varies from the PostgreSQL 9.4+ requirement as described in the Kong Community Edition documentation.

Note: The dictionary_name directive was added to prevent the usage of the kong shared dictionary, which could lead to no memory errors

Notes

An arbitrary number of limits/window sizes can be applied per plugin instance. This allows users to create multiple rate limiting windows (e.g., rate limit per minute and per hour, and/or per any arbitrary window size); because of limitation with Kong’s plugin configuration interface, each nth limit will apply to each nth window size. For example:

$ curl -i -X POST http://kong:8001/services/{service}/plugins \
  --data name=rate-limiting-advanced \
  --data config.limit=10,100 \
  --data config.window_size=60,3600 \
  --data config.sync_rate=10

This will apply rate limiting policies, one of which will trip when 10 hits have been counted in 60 seconds, or when 100 hits have been counted in 3600 seconds. For more information, please see Enterprise Rate Limiting Library.