HTTPAPI Working Group                                           R. Polli
Internet-Draft                         Team Digitale, Italian Government
Intended status: Standards Track                             A. Martinez
Expires: June 25, 2023                                           Red Hat
                                                       December 22, 2022
                       RateLimit Fields for HTTP
                draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-06
Abstract
   This document defines the RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining,
   RateLimit-Reset and RateLimit-Policy HTTP fields for servers to
   advertise their current service rate limits, thereby allowing clients
   to avoid being throttled.
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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
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Table of Contents
   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.2.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.  Concepts  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Quota Policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Time Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     2.3.  Service Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   3.  RateLimit Field Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.1.  RateLimit-Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.2.  RateLimit-Policy  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.3.  RateLimit-Remaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     3.4.  RateLimit-Reset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  Server Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.1.  Performance Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   5.  Client Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.1.  Intermediaries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.2.  Caching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     6.1.  Throttling does not prevent clients from issuing requests  12
     6.2.  Information disclosure  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     6.3.  Remaining quota units are not granted requests  . . . . .  13
     6.4.  Reliability of RateLimit-Reset  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.5.  Resource exhaustion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
       6.5.1.  Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
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     8.1.  RateLimit Parameters Registration . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     9.3.  URIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   Appendix A.  Rate-limiting and quotas . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
     A.1.  Interoperability issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
   Appendix B.  Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
     B.1.  Unparameterized responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
       B.1.1.  Throttling information in responses . . . . . . . . .  19
       B.1.2.  Use in conjunction with custom fields . . . . . . . .  20
       B.1.3.  Use for limiting concurrency  . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
       B.1.4.  Use in throttled responses  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     B.2.  Parameterized responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
       B.2.1.  Throttling window specified via parameter . . . . . .  23
       B.2.2.  Dynamic limits with parameterized windows . . . . . .  23
       B.2.3.  Dynamic limits for pushing back and slowing down  . .  24
     B.3.  Dynamic limits for pushing back with Retry-After and slow
           down  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
       B.3.1.  Missing Remaining information . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
       B.3.2.  Use with multiple windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
   RateLimit fields currently used on the web  . . . . . . . . . . .  30
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
   Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  32
     F.1.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-03 . . . . . .  32
     F.2.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-02 . . . . . .  32
     F.3.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-01 . . . . . .  32
     F.4.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-00 . . . . . .  32
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
1.  Introduction
   Rate limiting HTTP clients has become a widespread practice,
   especially for HTTP APIs.  Typically, servers who do so limit the
   number of acceptable requests in a given time window (e.g. 10
   requests per second).  See Appendix A for further information on the
   current usage of rate limiting in HTTP.
   Currently, there is no standard way for servers to communicate quotas
   so that clients can throttle its requests to prevent errors.  This
   document defines a set of standard HTTP fields to enable rate
   limiting:
   o  RateLimit-Limit: the server's quota for requests by the client in
      the time window,
   o  RateLimit-Remaining: the remaining quota in the current window,
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   o  RateLimit-Reset: the time remaining in the current window,
      specified in seconds, and
   o  RateLimit-Policy: the quota policy.
   These fields allow the establishment of complex rate limiting
   policies, including using multiple and variable time windows and
   dynamic quotas, and implementing concurrency limits.
   The behavior of the RateLimit-Reset field is compatible with the
   delay-seconds notation of Retry-After.
1.1.  Goals
   The goals of this document are:
   Interoperability:  Standardization of the names and semantics of
      rate-limit headers to ease their enforcement and adoption;
   Resiliency:  Improve resiliency of HTTP infrastructure by providing
      clients with information useful to throttle their requests and
      prevent 4xx or 5xx responses;
   Documentation:  Simplify API documentation by eliminating the need to
      include detailed quota limits and related fields in API
      documentation.
   The following features are out of the scope of this document:
   Authorization:  RateLimit fields are not meant to support
      authorization or other kinds of access controls.
   Throttling scope:  This specification does not cover the throttling
      scope, that may be the given resource-target, its parent path or
      the whole Origin (see Section 7 of [WEB-ORIGIN]).  This can be
      addressed using extensibility mechanisms such as the parameter
      registry Section 8.1.
   Response status code:  RateLimit fields may be returned in both
      successful (see Section 15.3 of [HTTP]) and non-successful
      responses.  This specification does not cover whether non
      Successful responses count on quota usage, nor it mandates any
      correlation between the RateLimit values and the returned status
      code.
   Throttling policy:  This specification does not mandate a specific
      throttling policy.  The values published in the fields, including
      the window size, can be statically or dynamically evaluated.
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   Service Level Agreement:  Conveyed quota hints do not imply any
      service guarantee.  Server is free to throttle respectful clients
      under certain circumstances.
1.2.  Notational Conventions
   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.
   This document uses the Augmented BNF defined in [RFC5234] and updated
   by [RFC7405] along with the "#rule" extension defined in
   Section 5.6.1 of [HTTP].
   The term Origin is to be interpreted as described in Section 7 of
   [WEB-ORIGIN].
   This document uses the terms List, Item and Integer from Section 3 of
   [STRUCTURED-FIELDS] to specify syntax and parsing, along with the
   concept of "bare item".
   The fields defined in this document are collectively referred to as
   "RateLimit fields".
2.  Concepts
2.1.  Quota Policy
   A quota policy is described in terms of quota units (Section 2.3) and
   a time window (Section 2.2).  It is an Item whose bare item is a
   service limit (Section 2.3), along with associated Parameters.
   The following parameters are defined in this specification:
   w: The REQUIRED "w" parameter value conveys a time window value as
      defined in Section 2.2.
   Other parameters are allowed and can be regarded as comments.  They
   ought to be registered within the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
   RateLimit Parameters Registry", as described in Section 8.1.
   For example, a quota policy of 100 quota units per minute:
      100;w=60
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   The definition of a quota policy does not imply any specific
   distribution of quota units within the time window.  If applicable,
   these details can be conveyed as extension parameters.
   For example, two quota policies containing further details via
   extension parameters:
      100;w=60;comment="fixed window"
      12;w=1;burst=1000;policy="leaky bucket"
   To avoid clashes, implementers SHOULD prefix unregistered parameters
   with a vendor identifier, e.g. "acme-policy", "acme-burst".  While it
   is useful to define a clear syntax and semantics even for custom
   parameters, it is important to note that user agents are not required
   to process quota policy information.
2.2.  Time Window
   Rate limit policies limit the number of acceptable requests within a
   given time interval, known as a time window.
   The time window is a non-negative Integer value expressing that
   interval in seconds, similar to the "delay-seconds" rule defined in
   Section 10.2.3 of [HTTP].  Subsecond precision is not supported.
2.3.  Service Limit
   The service limit is associated with the maximum number of requests
   that the server is willing to accept from one or more clients on a
   given basis (originating IP, authenticated user, geographical, ..)
   during a time window (Section 2.2).
   The service limit is a non-negative Integer expressed in quota units.
   The service limit SHOULD match the maximum number of acceptable
   requests.  However, the service limit MAY differ from the total
   number of acceptable requests when weight mechanisms, bursts, or
   other server policies are implemented.
   If the service limit does not match the maximum number of acceptable
   requests the relation with that SHOULD be communicated out-of-band.
   Example: A server could
   o  count once requests like "/books/{id}"
   o  count twice search requests like "/books?author=WuMing"
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   so that we have the following counters
   GET /books/123           ; service-limit=4, remaining: 3, status=200
   GET /books?author=WuMing ; service-limit=4, remaining: 1, status=200
   GET /books?author=Eco    ; service-limit=4, remaining: 0, status=429
3.  RateLimit Field Definitions
   The following RateLimit response fields are defined.
3.1.  RateLimit-Limit
   The "RateLimit-Limit" response field indicates the service limit
   (Section 2.3) associated with the client in the current time window
   (Section 2.2).  If the client exceeds that limit, it MAY not be
   served.
   The field is an Item and its value is a non-negative Integer referred
   to as the "expiring-limit".  This specification does not define
   Parameters for this field.  If they appear, they MUST be ignored.
   The expiring-limit MUST be set to the service limit that is closest
   to reaching its limit, and the associated time window MUST either be:
   o  inferred by the value of RateLimit-Reset field at the moment of
      the reset, or
   o  communicated out-of-band (e.g. in the documentation).
   The RateLimit-Policy field (see Section 3.2), might contain
   information on the associated time window.
      RateLimit-Limit: 100
   This field can be sent in a trailer section.
3.2.  RateLimit-Policy
   The "RateLimit-Policy" response field indicates the quota policies
   currently associated with the client.  Its value is informative.
   The field is a non-empty List of Items.  Each item is a quota policy
   (Section 2.1).
   This field can convey the time window associated with the expiring-
   limit, as shown in this example:
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      RateLimit-Policy: 100;w=10
      RateLimit-Limit: 100
   These examples show multiple policies being returned:
      RateLimit-Policy: 10;w=1, 50;w=60, 1000;w=3600, 5000;w=86400
      RateLimit-Policy: 10;w=1;burst=1000, 1000;w=3600
   This field can be sent in a trailer section.
3.3.  RateLimit-Remaining
   The "RateLimit-Remaining" response field indicates the remaining
   quota units associated to the expiring-limit.
   The field is an Item and its value is a non-negative Integer
   expressed in quota units (Section 2.3).  This specification does not
   define Parameters for this field.  If they appear, they MUST be
   ignored.
   This field can be sent in a trailer section.
   Clients MUST NOT assume that a positive RateLimit-Remaining field
   value is a guarantee that further requests will be served.
   When the value of RateLimit-Remaining is low, it indicates that the
   server may soon throttle the client (see Section 4).
   For example:
      RateLimit-Remaining: 50
3.4.  RateLimit-Reset
   The "RateLimit-Reset" field response field indicates the number of
   seconds until the quota associated to the expiring-limit resets.
   The field is a non-negative Integer compatible with the delay-seconds
   rule, because:
   o  it does not rely on clock synchronization and is resilient to
      clock adjustment and clock skew between client and server (see
      Section 5.6.7 of [HTTP]);
   o  it mitigates the risk related to thundering herd when too many
      clients are serviced with the same timestamp.
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   This specification does not define Parameters for this field.  If
   they appear, they MUST be ignored.
   This field can be sent in a trailer section.
   An example of RateLimit-Reset field use is below.
      RateLimit-Reset: 50
   The client MUST NOT assume that all its service limit will be reset
   at the moment indicated by the RateLimit-Reset field.  The server MAY
   arbitrarily alter the RateLimit-Reset field value between subsequent
   requests; for example, in case of resource saturation or to implement
   sliding window policies.
4.  Server Behavior
   A server uses the RateLimit fields to communicate its quota policies.
   Sending the RateLimit-Limit and RateLimit-Reset fields is REQUIRED;
   sending RateLimit-Remaining field is RECOMMENDED.
   A server MAY return RateLimit fields independently of the response
   status code.  This includes on throttled responses.  This document
   does not mandate any correlation between the RateLimit field values
   and the returned status code.
   Servers should be careful when returning RateLimit fields in
   redirection responses (i.e., responses with 3xx status codes) because
   a low RateLimit-Remaining field value could prevent the client from
   issuing requests.  For example, given the RateLimit fields below, a
   client could decide to wait 10 seconds before following the
   "Location" header field (see Section 10.2.2 of [HTTP]), because the
   RateLimit-Remaining field value is 0.
   HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
   Location: /foo/123
   RateLimit-Remaining: 0
   RateLimit-Limit: 10
   RateLimit-Reset: 10
   If a response contains both the Retry-After and the RateLimit-Reset
   fields, the RateLimit-Reset field value SHOULD reference the same
   point in time as the Retry-After field value.
   When using a policy involving more than one time window, the server
   MUST reply with the RateLimit fields related to the time window with
   the lower RateLimit-Remaining field values.
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   A service using RateLimit fields MUST NOT convey values exposing an
   unwanted volume of requests and SHOULD implement mechanisms to cap
   the ratio between RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset field
   values (see Section 6.5); this is especially important when a quota
   policy uses a large time window.
   Under certain conditions, a server MAY artificially lower RateLimit
   field values between subsequent requests, e.g. to respond to Denial
   of Service attacks or in case of resource saturation.
   Servers usually establish whether the request is in-quota before
   creating a response, so the RateLimit field values should be already
   available in that moment.  Nonetheless servers MAY decide to send the
   RateLimit fields in a trailer section.
4.1.  Performance Considerations
   Servers are not required to return RateLimit fields in every
   response, and clients need to take this into account.  For example,
   an implementer concerned with performance might provide RateLimit
   fields only when a given quota is going to expire.
   Implementers concerned with response fields' size, might take into
   account their ratio with respect to the content length, or use
   header-compression HTTP features such as [HPACK].
5.  Client Behavior
   The RateLimit fields can be used by clients to determine whether the
   associated request respected the server's quota policy, and as an
   indication of whether subsequent requests will.  However, the server
   might apply other criteria when servicing future requests, and so the
   quota policy may not completely reflect whether they will succeed.
   For example, a successful response with the following fields:
      RateLimit-Limit: 10
      RateLimit-Remaining: 1
      RateLimit-Reset: 7
   does not guarantee that the next request will be successful.
   Servers' behavior may be subject to other conditions like the one
   shown in the example from Section 2.3.
   A client MUST validate the RateLimit fields before using them and
   check if there are significant discrepancies with the expected ones.
   This includes a RateLimit-Reset field moment too far in the future
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   (e.g. similarly to receiving "Retry-after: 1000000") or a service-
   limit too high.
   A client receiving RateLimit fields MUST NOT assume that future
   responses will contain the same RateLimit fields, or any RateLimit
   fields at all.
   Malformed RateLimit fields MUST be ignored.
   A client SHOULD NOT exceed the quota units conveyed by the RateLimit-
   Remaining field before the time window expressed in RateLimit-Reset
   field.
   A client MAY still probe the server if the RateLimit-Reset field is
   considered too high.
   The value of RateLimit-Reset field is generated at response time: a
   client aware of a significant network latency MAY behave accordingly
   and use other information (e.g. the "Date" response header field, or
   otherwise gathered metrics) to better estimate the RateLimit-Reset
   field moment intended by the server.
   The details provided in RateLimit-Policy field are informative and
   MAY be ignored.
   If a response contains both the RateLimit-Reset and Retry-After
   fields, the Retry-After field MUST take precedence and the RateLimit-
   Reset field MAY be ignored.
   This specification does not mandate a specific throttling behavior
   and implementers can adopt their preferred policies, including:
   o  slowing down or preemptively back-off their request rate when
      approaching quota limits;
   o  consuming all the quota according to the exposed limits and then
      wait.
5.1.  Intermediaries
   This section documents the considerations advised in Section 16.3.2
   of [HTTP].
   An intermediary that is not part of the originating service
   infrastructure and is not aware of the quota policy semantic used by
   the Origin Server SHOULD NOT alter the RateLimit fields' values in
   such a way as to communicate a more permissive quota policy; this
   includes removing the RateLimit fields.
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   An intermediary MAY alter the RateLimit fields in such a way as to
   communicate a more restrictive quota policy when:
   o  it is aware of the quota unit semantic used by the Origin Server;
   o  it implements this specification and enforces a quota policy which
      is more restrictive than the one conveyed in the fields.
   An intermediary SHOULD forward a request even when presuming that it
   might not be serviced; the service returning the RateLimit fields is
   the sole responsible of enforcing the communicated quota policy, and
   it is always free to service incoming requests.
   This specification does not mandate any behavior on intermediaries
   respect to retries, nor requires that intermediaries have any role in
   respecting quota policies.  For example, it is legitimate for a proxy
   to retransmit a request without notifying the client, and thus
   consuming quota units.
   Privacy considerations (Section 7) provide further guidance on
   intermediaries.
5.2.  Caching
   [HTTP-CACHING] defines how responses can be stored and reused for
   subsequent requests, including those with RateLimit fields.  Because
   the information in RateLimit fields on a cached response may not be
   current, they SHOULD be ignored on responses that come from cache
   (i.e., those with a positive current_age; see Section 4.2.3 of
   [HTTP-CACHING]).
6.  Security Considerations
6.1.  Throttling does not prevent clients from issuing requests
   This specification does not prevent clients from making requests.
   Servers should always implement mechanisms to prevent resource
   exhaustion.
6.2.  Information disclosure
   Servers should not disclose to untrusted parties operational capacity
   information that can be used to saturate its infrastructural
   resources.
   While this specification does not mandate whether non-successful
   responses consume quota, if error responses (such as 401
   (Unauthorized) and 403 (Forbidden)) count against quota, a malicious
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   client could probe the endpoint to get traffic information of another
   user.
   As intermediaries might retransmit requests and consume quota units
   without prior knowledge of the user agent, RateLimit fields might
   reveal the existence of an intermediary to the user agent.
6.3.  Remaining quota units are not granted requests
   RateLimit fields convey hints from the server to the clients in order
   to help them avoid being throttled out.
   Clients MUST NOT consider the quota units (Section 2.3) returned in
   RateLimit-Remaining field as a service level agreement.
   In case of resource saturation, the server MAY artificially lower the
   returned values or not serve the request regardless of the advertised
   quotas.
6.4.  Reliability of RateLimit-Reset
   Consider that service limit might not be restored after the moment
   referenced by RateLimit-Reset field, and the RateLimit-Reset field
   value may not be fixed nor constant.
   Subsequent requests might return a higher RateLimit-Reset field value
   to limit concurrency or implement dynamic or adaptive throttling
   policies.
6.5.  Resource exhaustion
   When returning RateLimit-Reset field you must be aware that many
   throttled clients may come back at the very moment specified.
   This is true for Retry-After too.
   For example, if the quota resets every day at "18:00:00" and your
   server returns the RateLimit-Reset field accordingly
      Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 08:00:00 GMT
      RateLimit-Reset: 36000
   there's a high probability that all clients will show up at
   "18:00:00".
   This could be mitigated by adding some jitter to the field-value.
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   Resource exhaustion issues can be associated with quota policies
   using a large time window, because a user agent by chance or on
   purpose might consume most of its quota units in a significantly
   shorter interval.
   This behavior can be even triggered by the provided RateLimit fields.
   The following example describes a service with an unconsumed quota
   policy of 10000 quota units per 1000 seconds.
   RateLimit-Limit: 10000
   RateLimit-Policy: 10000;w=1000
   RateLimit-Remaining: 10000
   RateLimit-Reset: 10
   A client implementing a simple ratio between RateLimit-Remaining
   field and RateLimit-Reset field could infer an average throughput of
   1000 quota units per second, while the RateLimit-Limit field conveys
   a quota-policy with an average of 10 quota units per second.  If the
   service cannot handle such load, it should return either a lower
   RateLimit-Remaining field value or an higher RateLimit-Reset field
   value.  Moreover, complementing large time window quota policies with
   a short time window one mitigates those risks.
6.5.1.  Denial of Service
   RateLimit fields may contain unexpected values by chance or on
   purpose.  For example, an excessively high RateLimit-Remaining field
   value may be:
   o  used by a malicious intermediary to trigger a Denial of Service
      attack or consume client resources boosting its requests;
   o  passed by a misconfigured server;
   or a high RateLimit-Reset field value could inhibit clients to
   contact the server.
   Clients MUST validate the received values to mitigate those risks.
7.  Privacy Considerations
   Clients that act upon a request to rate limit are potentially re-
   identifiable (see Section 5.2.1 of [PRIVACY]) because they react to
   information that might only be given to them.  Note that this might
   apply to other fields too (e.g. Retry-After).
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   Since rate limiting is usually implemented in contexts where clients
   are either identified or profiled (e.g. assigning different quota
   units to different users), this is rarely a concern.
   Privacy enhancing infrastructures using RateLimit fields can define
   specific techniques to mitigate the risks of re-identification.
8.  IANA Considerations
   IANA is requested to update one registry and create one new registry.
   Please add the following entries to the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol
   (HTTP) Field Name Registry" registry ([HTTP]):
       +---------------------+-----------+-------------------------+
       | Field Name          | Status    | Specification           |
       +---------------------+-----------+-------------------------+
       | RateLimit-Limit     | permanent | Section 3.1 of RFC nnnn |
       | RateLimit-Remaining | permanent | Section 3.3 of RFC nnnn |
       | RateLimit-Reset     | permanent | Section 3.4 of RFC nnnn |
       | RateLimit-Policy    | permanent | Section 3.2 of RFC nnnn |
       +---------------------+-----------+-------------------------+
8.1.  RateLimit Parameters Registration
   IANA is requested to create a new registry to be called "Hypertext
   Transfer Protocol (HTTP) RateLimit Parameters Registry", to be
   located at https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-ratelimit-parameters
   [1].  Registration is done on the advice of a Designated Expert,
   appointed by the IESG or their delegate.  All entries are
   Specification Required ([IANA], Section 4.6).
   Registration requests consist of the following information:
   o  Parameter name: The parameter name, conforming to
      [STRUCTURED-FIELDS].
   o  Field name: The RateLimit field for which the parameter is
      registered.  If a parameter is intended to be used with multiple
      fields, it has to be registered for each one.
   o  Description: A brief description of the parameter.
   o  Specification document: A reference to the document that specifies
      the parameter, preferably including a URI that can be used to
      retrieve a copy of the document.
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   o  Comments (optional): Any additional information that can be
      useful.
   The initial contents of this registry should be:
   +----------------+----------+------------+--------------+-----------+
   | Field Name     | Paramete | Descriptio | Specificatio | Comments  |
   |                | r name   | n          | n            | (optional |
   |                |          |            |              | )         |
   +----------------+----------+------------+--------------+-----------+
   | RateLimit-     | w        | Time       | Section 2.1  |           |
   | Policy         |          | window     | of RFC nnnn  |           |
   +----------------+----------+------------+--------------+-----------+
9.  References
9.1.  Normative References
   [HTTP]     Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
              Ed., "HTTP Semantics", STD 97, RFC 9110,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9110, June 2022,
              .
   [IANA]     Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
              Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
              RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
              .
   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              .
   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
              .
   [RFC7405]  Kyzivat, P., "Case-Sensitive String Support in ABNF",
              RFC 7405, DOI 10.17487/RFC7405, December 2014,
              .
   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, .
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   [STRUCTURED-FIELDS]
              Nottingham, M. and P-H. Kamp, "Structured Field Values for
              HTTP", RFC 8941, DOI 10.17487/RFC8941, February 2021,
              .
   [WEB-ORIGIN]
              Barth, A., "The Web Origin Concept", RFC 6454,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6454, December 2011,
              .
9.2.  Informative References
   [HPACK]    Peon, R. and H. Ruellan, "HPACK: Header Compression for
              HTTP/2", RFC 7541, DOI 10.17487/RFC7541, May 2015,
              .
   [HTTP-CACHING]
              Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
              Ed., "HTTP Caching", STD 98, RFC 9111,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9111, June 2022,
              .
   [PRIVACY]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
              .
   [RFC3339]  Klyne, G. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the Internet:
              Timestamps", RFC 3339, DOI 10.17487/RFC3339, July 2002,
              .
   [RFC6585]  Nottingham, M. and R. Fielding, "Additional HTTP Status
              Codes", RFC 6585, DOI 10.17487/RFC6585, April 2012,
              .
   [UNIX]     The Open Group, "The Single UNIX Specification, Version 2
              - 6 Vol Set for UNIX 98", February 1997.
9.3.  URIs
   [1] https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-ratelimit-parameters
   [2] https://github.com/httpwg/http-core/
       pull/317#issuecomment-585868767
   [3] https://github.com/ioggstream/draft-polli-ratelimit-headers/
       issues/70
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   [4] https://community.ntppool.org/t/another-ntp-client-failure-
       story/1014/
   [5] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-
       wg/2019JulSep/0202.html
   [6] https://github.com/ioggstream/draft-polli-ratelimit-headers/
       issues/34#issuecomment-519366481
Appendix A.  Rate-limiting and quotas
   Servers use quota mechanisms to avoid systems overload, to ensure an
   equitable distribution of computational resources or to enforce other
   policies - e.g. monetization.
   A basic quota mechanism limits the number of acceptable requests in a
   given time window, e.g. 10 requests per second.
   When quota is exceeded, servers usually do not serve the request
   replying instead with a 4xx HTTP status code (e.g. 429 or 403) or
   adopt more aggressive policies like dropping connections.
   Quotas may be enforced on different basis (e.g. per user, per IP, per
   geographic area, ..) and at different levels.  For example, an user
   may be allowed to issue:
   o  10 requests per second;
   o  limited to 60 requests per minute;
   o  limited to 1000 requests per hour.
   Moreover system metrics, statistics and heuristics can be used to
   implement more complex policies, where the number of acceptable
   requests and the time window are computed dynamically.
   To help clients throttling their requests, servers may expose the
   counters used to evaluate quota policies via HTTP header fields.
   Those response headers may be added by HTTP intermediaries such as
   API gateways and reverse proxies.
   On the web we can find many different rate-limit headers, usually
   containing the number of allowed requests in a given time window, and
   when the window is reset.
   The common choice is to return three headers containing:
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   o  the maximum number of allowed requests in the time window;
   o  the number of remaining requests in the current window;
   o  the time remaining in the current window expressed in seconds or
      as a timestamp;
A.1.  Interoperability issues
   A major interoperability issue in throttling is the lack of standard
   headers, because:
   o  each implementation associates different semantics to the same
      header field names;
   o  header field names proliferates.
   User agents interfacing with different servers may thus need to
   process different headers, or the very same application interface
   that sits behind different reverse proxies may reply with different
   throttling headers.
Appendix B.  Examples
B.1.  Unparameterized responses
B.1.1.  Throttling information in responses
   The client exhausted its service-limit for the next 50 seconds.  The
   time-window is communicated out-of-band or inferred by the field
   values.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 0
   Ratelimit-Reset: 50
   {"hello": "world"}
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   Since the field values are not necessarily correlated with the
   response status code, a subsequent request is not required to fail.
   The example below shows that the server decided to serve the request
   even if RateLimit-Remaining field value is 0.  Another server, or the
   same server under other load conditions, could have decided to
   throttle the request instead.
   Request:
   GET /items/456 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 0
   Ratelimit-Reset: 48
   {"still": "successful"}
B.1.2.  Use in conjunction with custom fields
   The server uses two custom fields, namely "acme-RateLimit-DayLimit"
   and "acme-RateLimit-HourLimit" to expose the following policy:
   o  5000 daily quota units;
   o  1000 hourly quota units.
   The client consumed 4900 quota units in the first 14 hours.
   Despite the next hourly limit of 1000 quota units, the closest limit
   to reach is the daily one.
   The server then exposes the RateLimit fields to inform the client
   that:
   o  it has only 100 quota units left;
   o  the window will reset in 10 hours.
   Request:
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   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   acme-RateLimit-DayLimit: 5000
   acme-RateLimit-HourLimit: 1000
   RateLimit-Limit: 5000
   RateLimit-Remaining: 100
   RateLimit-Reset: 36000
   {"hello": "world"}
B.1.3.  Use for limiting concurrency
   Throttling fields may be used to limit concurrency, advertising
   limits that are lower than the usual ones in case of saturation, thus
   increasing availability.
   The server adopted a basic policy of 100 quota units per minute, and
   in case of resource exhaustion adapts the returned values reducing
   both RateLimit-Limit and RateLimit-Remaining field values.
   After 2 seconds the client consumed 40 quota units
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   RateLimit-Remaining: 60
   RateLimit-Reset: 58
   {"elapsed": 2, "issued": 40}
   At the subsequent request - due to resource exhaustion - the server
   advertises only "RateLimit-Remaining: 20".
   Request:
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   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   RateLimit-Remaining: 20
   RateLimit-Reset: 56
   {"elapsed": 4, "issued": 41}
B.1.4.  Use in throttled responses
   A client exhausted its quota and the server throttles it sending
   Retry-After.
   In this example, the values of Retry-After and RateLimit-Reset field
   reference the same moment, but this is not a requirement.
   The 429 (Too Many Request) HTTP status code is just used as an
   example.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
   Content-Type: application/json
   Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2019 09:27:00 GMT
   Retry-After: Mon, 05 Aug 2019 09:27:05 GMT
   RateLimit-Reset: 5
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 0
   {
   "title": "Too Many Requests",
   "status": 429,
   "detail": "You have exceeded your quota"
   }
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B.2.  Parameterized responses
B.2.1.  Throttling window specified via parameter
   The client has 99 quota units left for the next 50 seconds.  The time
   window is communicated by the "w" parameter, so we know the
   throughput is 100 quota units per minute.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   RateLimit-Policy: 100;w=60
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 99
   Ratelimit-Reset: 50
   {"hello": "world"}
B.2.2.  Dynamic limits with parameterized windows
   The policy conveyed by the RateLimit-Limit field states that the
   server accepts 100 quota units per minute.
   To avoid resource exhaustion, the server artificially lowers the
   actual limits returned in the throttling headers.
   The RateLimit-Remaining field then advertises only 9 quota units for
   the next 50 seconds to slow down the client.
   Note that the server could have lowered even the other values in the
   RateLimit-Limit field: this specification does not mandate any
   relation between the field values contained in subsequent responses.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
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   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 10
   RateLimit-Policy: 100;w=60
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 9
   Ratelimit-Reset: 50
   {
     "status": 200,
     "detail": "Just slow down without waiting."
   }
B.2.3.  Dynamic limits for pushing back and slowing down
   Continuing the previous example, let's say the client waits 10
   seconds and performs a new request which, due to resource exhaustion,
   the server rejects and pushes back, advertising "RateLimit-Remaining:
   0" for the next 20 seconds.
   The server advertises a smaller window with a lower limit to slow
   down the client for the rest of its original window after the 20
   seconds elapse.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 0
   RateLimit-Policy: 15;w=20
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 0
   Ratelimit-Reset: 20
   {
     "status": 429,
     "detail": "Wait 20 seconds, then slow down!"
   }
B.3.  Dynamic limits for pushing back with Retry-After and slow down
   Alternatively, given the same context where the previous example
   starts, we can convey the same information to the client via Retry-
   After, with the advantage that the server can now specify the
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   policy's nominal limit and window that will apply after the reset,
   e.g. assuming the resource exhaustion is likely to be gone by then,
   so the advertised policy does not need to be adjusted, yet we managed
   to stop requests for a while and slow down the rest of the current
   window.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
   Content-Type: application/json
   Retry-After: 20
   RateLimit-Limit: 15
   RateLimit-Policy: 100;w=60
   Ratelimit-Remaining: 15
   Ratelimit-Reset: 40
   {
     "status": 429,
     "detail": "Wait 20 seconds, then slow down!"
   }
   Note that in this last response the client is expected to honor
   Retry-After and perform no requests for the specified amount of time,
   whereas the previous example would not force the client to stop
   requests before the reset time is elapsed, as it would still be free
   to query again the server even if it is likely to have the request
   rejected.
B.3.1.  Missing Remaining information
   The server does not expose RateLimit-Remaining field values (for
   example, because the underlying counters are not available).
   Instead, it resets the limit counter every second.
   It communicates to the client the limit of 10 quota units per second
   always returning the couple RateLimit-Limit and RateLimit-Reset
   field.
   Request:
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   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 10
   Ratelimit-Reset: 1
   {"first": "request"}
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 Ok
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 10
   Ratelimit-Reset: 1
   {"second": "request"}
B.3.2.  Use with multiple windows
   This is a standardized way of describing the policy detailed in
   Appendix B.1.2:
   o  5000 daily quota units;
   o  1000 hourly quota units.
   The client consumed 4900 quota units in the first 14 hours.
   Despite the next hourly limit of 1000 quota units, the closest limit
   to reach is the daily one.
   The server then exposes the RateLimit fields to inform the client
   that:
   o  it has only 100 quota units left;
   o  the window will reset in 10 hours;
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   o  the expiring-limit is 5000.
   Request:
   GET /items/123 HTTP/1.1
   Host: api.example
   Response:
   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-Type: application/json
   RateLimit-Limit: 5000
   RateLimit-Policy: 1000;w=3600, 5000;w=86400
   RateLimit-Remaining: 100
   RateLimit-Reset: 36000
   {"hello": "world"}
FAQ
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   1.  Why defining standard fields for throttling?
       To simplify enforcement of throttling policies.
   2.  Can I use RateLimit fields in throttled responses (eg with status
       code 429)?
       Yes, you can.
   3.  Are those specs tied to RFC 6585?
       No.  [RFC6585] defines the "429" status code and we use it just
       as an example of a throttled request, that could instead use even
       "403" or whatever status code.  The goal of this specification is
       to standardize the name and semantic of three ratelimit fields
       widely used on the internet.  Stricter relations with status
       codes or error response payloads would impose behaviors to all
       the existing implementations making the adoption more complex.
   4.  Why don't pass the throttling scope as a parameter?
       The word "scope" can have different meanings: for example it can
       be an URL, or an authorization scope.  Since authorization is out
       of the scope of this document (see Section 1.1), and that we rely
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       only on [HTTP], in Section 1.1 we defined "scope" in terms of
       URL.
       Since clients are not required to process quota policies (see
       Section 5), we could add a new "RateLimit-Scope" field to this
       spec.  See this discussion on a similar thread [2]
       Specific ecosystems can still bake their own prefixed parameters,
       such as "acme-auth-scope" or "acme-url-scope" and ensure that
       clients process them.  This behavior cannot be relied upon when
       communicating between different ecosystems.
       We are open to suggestions: comment on this issue [3]
   5.  Why using delay-seconds instead of a UNIX Timestamp?  Why not
       using subsecond precision?
       Using delay-seconds aligns with Retry-After, which is returned in
       similar contexts, eg on 429 responses.
       Timestamps require a clock synchronization protocol (see
       Section 5.6.7 of [HTTP]).  This may be problematic (e.g. clock
       adjustment, clock skew, failure of hardcoded clock
       synchronization servers, IoT devices, ..).  Moreover timestamps
       may not be monotonically increasing due to clock adjustment.  See
       Another NTP client failure story [4]
       We did not use subsecond precision because:
       *  that is more subject to system clock correction like the one
          implemented via the adjtimex() Linux system call;
       *  response-time latency may not make it worth.  A brief
          discussion on the subject is on the httpwg ml [5]
       *  almost all rate-limit headers implementations do not use it.
   6.  Why not support multiple quota remaining?
       While this might be of some value, my experience suggests that
       overly-complex quota implementations results in lower
       effectiveness of this policy.  This spec allows the client to
       easily focusing on RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset.
   7.  Shouldn't I limit concurrency instead of request rate?
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       You can use this specification to limit concurrency at the HTTP
       level (see {#use-for-limiting-concurrency}) and help clients to
       shape their requests avoiding being throttled out.
       A problematic way to limit concurrency is connection dropping,
       especially when connections are multiplexed (e.g. HTTP/2) because
       this results in unserviced client requests, which is something we
       want to avoid.
       A semantic way to limit concurrency is to return 503 + Retry-
       After in case of resource saturation (e.g. thrashing, connection
       queues too long, Service Level Objectives not meet, ..).
       Saturation conditions can be either dynamic or static: all this
       is out of the scope for the current document.
   8.  Do a positive value of RateLimit-Remaining field imply any
       service guarantee for my future requests to be served?
       No.  FAQ integrated in Section 3.3.
   9.  Is the quota-policy definition Section 2.1 too complex?
       You can always return the simplest form of the 3 fields
   RateLimit-Limit: 100
   RateLimit-Remaining: 50
   RateLimit-Reset: 60
   The key runtime value is the first element of the list: "expiring-
   limit", the others quota-policy are informative.  So for the
   following field:
RateLimit-Limit: 100
RateLimit-Policy: 100;w=60;burst=1000;comment="sliding window", 5000;w=3600;burst=0;comment="fixed window"
   the key value is the one referencing the lowest limit: "100"
   1.  Can we use shorter names?  Why don't put everything in one field?
   The most common syntax we found on the web is "X-RateLimit-*" and
   when starting this I-D we opted for it [6]
   The basic form of those fields is easily parseable, even by
   implementers processing responses using technologies like dynamic
   interpreter with limited syntax.
   Using a single field complicates parsing and takes a significantly
   different approach from the existing ones: this can limit adoption.
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   1.  Why don't mention connections?
       Beware of the term "connection":   - it is just
       _one_ possible saturation cause.  Once you go that path 
       you will expose other infrastructural details (bandwidth, CPU, ..
       see Section 6.2)  and complicate client compliance;
        - it is an infrastructural detail defined in terms of
       server and network  rather than the consumed service.
       This specification protects the services first, and then the
       infrastructures through client cooperation (see Section 6.1).
         RateLimit fields enable sending _on the same
       connection_ different limit values  on each response,
       depending on the policy scope (e.g. per-user, per-custom-key, ..)
       
   2.  Can intermediaries alter RateLimit fields?
       Generally, they should not because it might result in unserviced
       requests.  There are reasonable use cases for intermediaries
       mangling RateLimit fields though, e.g. when they enforce stricter
       quota-policies, or when they are an active component of the
       service.  In those case we will consider them as part of the
       originating infrastructure.
   3.  Why the "w" parameter is just informative?  Could it be used by a
       client to determine the request rate?
       A non-informative "w" parameter might be fine in an environment
       where clients and servers are tightly coupled.  Conveying
       policies with this detail on a large scale would be very complex
       and implementations would be likely not interoperable.  We thus
       decided to leave "w" as an informational parameter and only rely
       on RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining field and RateLimit-Reset
       field for defining the throttling behavior.
RateLimit fields currently used on the web
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   Commonly used header field names are:
   o  "X-RateLimit-Limit", "X-RateLimit-Remaining", "X-RateLimit-Reset";
   o  "X-Rate-Limit-Limit", "X-Rate-Limit-Remaining", "X-Rate-Limit-
      Reset".
   There are variants too, where the window is specified in the header
   field name, eg:
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   o  "x-ratelimit-limit-minute", "x-ratelimit-limit-hour", "x-
      ratelimit-limit-day"
   o  "x-ratelimit-remaining-minute", "x-ratelimit-remaining-hour", "x-
      ratelimit-remaining-day"
   Here are some interoperability issues:
   o  "X-RateLimit-Remaining" references different values, depending on
      the implementation:
      *  seconds remaining to the window expiration
      *  milliseconds remaining to the window expiration
      *  seconds since UTC, in UNIX Timestamp [UNIX]
      *  a datetime, either "IMF-fixdate" [HTTP] or [RFC3339]
   o  different headers, with the same semantic, are used by different
      implementers:
      *  X-RateLimit-Limit and X-Rate-Limit-Limit
      *  X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-Rate-Limit-Remaining
      *  X-RateLimit-Reset and X-Rate-Limit-Reset
   The semantic of RateLimit-Remaining depends on the windowing
   algorithm.  A sliding window policy for example may result in having
   a RateLimit-Remaining field value related to the ratio between the
   current and the maximum throughput. e.g.
RateLimit-Limit: 12
RateLimit-Policy: 12;w=1
RateLimit-Remaining: 6          ; using 50% of throughput, that is 6 units/s
RateLimit-Reset: 1
   If this is the case, the optimal solution is to achieve
RateLimit-Limit: 12
RateLimit-Policy: 12;w=1
RateLimit-Remaining: 1          ; using 100% of throughput, that is 12 units/s
RateLimit-Reset: 1
   At this point you should stop increasing your request rate.
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Acknowledgements
   Thanks to Willi Schoenborn, Alejandro Martinez Ruiz, Alessandro
   Ranellucci, Amos Jeffries, Martin Thomson, Erik Wilde and Mark
   Nottingham for being the initial contributors of these
   specifications.  Kudos to the first community implementers: Aapo
   Talvensaari, Nathan Friedly and Sanyam Dogra.
   In addition to the people above, this document owes a lot to the
   extensive discussion in the HTTPAPI workgroup, including Rich Salz,
   Darrel Miller and Julian Reschke.
Changes
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
F.1.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-03
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   o  Split policy informatio in RateLimit-Policy #81
F.2.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-02
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   o  Address throttling scope #83
F.3.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-01
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   o  Update IANA considerations #60
   o  Use Structured fields #58
   o  Reorganize document #67
F.4.  Since draft-ietf-httpapi-ratelimit-headers-00
   This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
   o  Use I-D.httpbis-semantics, which includes referencing delay-
      seconds instead of delta-seconds. #5
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Authors' Addresses
   Roberto Polli
   Team Digitale, Italian Government
   Italy
   Email: robipolli@gmail.com
   Alejandro Martinez Ruiz
   Red Hat
   Email: alex@flawedcode.org
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