Rate Limiting Strategies with Valkey and Redis - Martin Visser

Traffic spikes and “noisy neighbors” can quickly saturate backend resources. In this session, Martin Visser (Valkey and Redis Tech Lead @ Percona) explores robust rate-limiting strategies to protect system resilience and ensure fair resource allocation.

Martin deep-dives into five essential algorithms, comparing their complexity and memory impact. He provides practical Lua and Python examples for implementing:

• Fixed Window: Simple but prone to boundary bursts [00:05:57].
• Token Bucket: Highly configurable for general-purpose API limits [00:09:10].
• Sliding Window Counter: A memory-efficient way to smooth out bursts using weighted averages [00:16:42].
• Leaky Bucket: Ideal for infrastructure protection by shaping traffic into a constant flow [00:20:37].

The talk also addresses real-world scaling challenges, including managing cluster-wide atomicity with hash tags, handling hot keys, and implementing client-side resilience through exponential backoff and standardized HTTP headers.

• 📅 Date: February 26, 2026
• 👤 Speaker: Martin Visser - Valkey and Redis Tech Lead @ Percona
• 🎥 Watch the Recording: https://youtu.be/h9aqUIt71Ao

Watch the Presentation!