Distributed Rate Limiting
=========================

This repository contains a collection of algorithms
for solving the distributed rate limit problem.

Problem
=======

Suppose a CDN (Content-Delivery Network) has a cluster of servers which to-
gether host online content for some customer A. The CDN wants to restrict
the amount of network bandwidth given to customer A since the customer has
only paid for a finite amount; say 5 gigabytes per second. However, due to the
distributed nature of the CDN's system incoming requests can arrive randomly
and can be scheduled to any server in the cluster. To ensure customer A's
usage-limit is not exceeded the cluster of nodes must work together and
adjust the usage-limit across all servers.


NOTES
=====
gen_server module is part of stdlib, described at
http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html