Nginx Rate Limiting by Referrer

nginxrate-limitingtraffic-management

I've successfully set up rate limiting on IP addresses like so,

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

But I was wondering if its possible to do the same on referrers? For example, if a site gets placed in an iframe on a third party site, which generates too much traffic to handle.

I can't find any nginx variables for the referrer anywhere.

I don't want to block traffic completely, just limit the traffic that comes from an iframe.

Is this possible? Or can the solution be achieved in a different way?

Thanks.

Best Answer

@R1CH_TL on Twitter suggested using something like this:

map $http_referer $limit_ip_key {
    default $binary_remote_addr;
    "http://domain-to-limit.co.uk/" 1;
}

limit_req_zone  $limit_ip_key        zone=two:10m   rate=1r/s;

Would this method work? And would it be better than silasistefan's solution?

Related Solutions

nginx – Rate Limiting with X-Forwarded-For Header

Yes, typical rate-limiting configuration definition string looks like:

 limit_req_zone  $binary_remote_addr zone=zone:16m rate=1r/s;

where $binary_remote_addr is the unique key for limiter. You should try changing it to $http_x_forwarded_for variable which gets the value of X-Forwarded-For header. Although this will increase memory consumption because $binary_remote_addr is using compressed binary format for storing IP addresses and $http_x_forwarded_for is not.

 limit_req_zone  $http_x_forwarded_for zone=zone:16m rate=1r/s;

Nginx rate limiting: unknown directive limit_req_zone

Either you are using an ancient version of nginx (< 0.7.21) or ngx_http_limit_req_module module is not compiled into your nginx build (which is a bit odd). Run nginx -V 2>&1 | grep --colour=auto limit to check if maybe it's been disabled at build.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

nginx – Rate Limiting with X-Forwarded-For Header

Nginx rate limiting: unknown directive limit_req_zone

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