Throttling

is a technique that limits the number of requests or data that a server can handle in a given time period.

• Helps to prevent overloading, improve performance, and allow quota limits.
• Protects against denial-of-service (DoS), by limiting the number of requests per IP.
• Helps to balance between different servers or regions.
• Can be used to establish the priority of requests (pay for quality of service).
• Can be used to govern and commercialize APIs (ex: Google Maps).
• Cloud services use throttling for limits and quotas for storage, computing, and so on.