DoS attack

A Denial of Service (DoS) happens when one client sends more requests than a system can handle, which also impacts other clients.

A DoS can be an attack, but it doesn’t have to be. It could also be caused by a poorly implemented Retry Mechanism, for example (i.e., a Retry Mechanism without Exponential Backoff . (A DDoS Attack also floods the system with requests so that it doesn’t work anymore, but that is an attack).

By applying Rate Limiting one can prevent a DoS.

Related terms: DDoS attack