nginx 0.7 and limit_req

[Omar Kilani]

Hi Igor,

I've recently started using the new limit_req module in nginx 0.7 to
try to throttle requests to the API of our web service.

We've been having some issues in that 'delayed' requests seem to be
returned with a 503 HTTP response header, but with the correct body
(the limit_req is under a 'location' block with proxy_pass).

The configuration is:

limit_req_zone  $binary_remote_addr  zone=api_one:10m   rate=1r/s;

location /services/rest {
    limit_req zone=api_one burst=5;
    proxy_pass http://rtm_api;
    ...
}

My intention is to limit requests to an average of 1 request a second,
burstable to 5 requests, and supporting delaying requests until
they're within that 1 request / second threshold.

Is the 503 response a known issue?

Also, could you tell me how to test this particular configuration to
make sure it's correct?

I've tried ab/http_load/siege, etc.

Thanks for your time!

Regards,
Omar