Throttling и circuit breaker

Throttling и Circuit Breaker

With high load and many integrations, it is important not only to scale, but also to prevent overloads and avalanche-like failures. Two key mechanisms are used for this:

• Throttling - monitors the frequency of requests in real time,
• Circuit Breaker - Breaks the call chain when dependent services fail.

They protect the API from falling, increase the fault tolerance of the system and help maintain stable operation even in case of partial failures.

What is throttling

Characteristic	Description
Frequency limit	Control the number of requests in a given time interval (RPS, RPM)
Flexible configuration	Limits by endpoint, key, user or IP
Smooth release	Load reduction without full interlock

What is circuit breaker

Function	What Does
Error monitoring	Monitors the error/timeout rate of an API or external service
Call Disconnect	Temporarily blocks calls when failure threshold is reached
Automatic Recovery	Check Availability and Enable Calls at Stabilization

How we implement

Using libraries (e.g. Resilience4j, Hystrix, Envoy, Kong)
Configuring gateway limits and backend logic
Event logging and failure/recovery metrics
Circuit breaker notifications and dramatically reduced bandwidth
Integration with Prometheus, Datadog, Grafana for monitoring

Advantages

Protection against "collapse" of the system in case of failures depending on
Stability under load and during incidents
Isolate problematic components and improve API reliability
Simplified debugging and quick response to anomalies
Avoid cascading failures in microservice architecture

Where especially important

APIs interacting with payment gateways and external banks
Multi-dependency microservice architectures
Applications with millions of users and high resource competition
Delay-sensitive realtime platforms

Throttling and circuit breaker are strategic survival mechanisms of the API. We will implement protection that will allow your service to remain stable, fast and predictable even in the most unstable conditions.