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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

API Rate Limiting

Restricting how many API requests a client can make in a time period to protect service availability.

Definition

Exceeding the limit returns HTTP 429 Too Many Requests, often with a Retry-After header. Clients should implement exponential backoff with jitter. For example, the Meraki Dashboard API limits each organization to about 10 requests per second.

Example

A script sleeps for the Retry-After value when it receives 429 from the Meraki API.

Exam tip

Correct client response to 429 is backoff and retry after the indicated delay.

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