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# User and IP rate limits **(CORE ONLY)**

Rate limiting is a common technique used to improve the security and durability
of a web application. For more details, see
[Rate limits](../../../security/rate_limits.md).

The following limits can be enforced in **Admin Area > Settings > Network > User and
IP rate limits**:

- Unauthenticated requests
- Authenticated API requests
- Authenticated web requests

These limits are disabled by default.

![user-and-ip-rate-limits](img/user_and_ip_rate_limits.png)

## Use an HTTP header to bypass rate limiting

> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/scalability/-/issues/622) in GitLab 13.6.

Depending on the needs of your organization, you may want to enable rate limiting
but have some requests bypass the rate limiter.

You can do this by marking requests that should bypass the rate limiter with a custom
header. You must do this somewhere in a load balancer or reverse proxy in front of
GitLab. For example:

1. Pick a name for your bypass header. For example, `Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting`.
1. Configure your load balancer to set `Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting: 1` on requests
   that should bypass GitLab rate limiting.
1. Configure your load balancer to either:
   - Erase `Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting`.
   - Set `Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting` to a value other than `1` on all requests that
     should be affected by rate limiting.
1. Set the environment variable  `GITLAB_THROTTLE_BYPASS_HEADER`.
   - For [Omnibus](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/environment-variables.html),
     set `'GITLAB_THROTTLE_BYPASS_HEADER' => 'Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting'` in `gitlab_rails['env']`.
   - For source installations, set `export GITLAB_THROTTLE_BYPASS_HEADER=Gitlab-Bypass-Rate-Limiting`
     in `/etc/default/gitlab`.

It is important that your load balancer erases or overwrites the bypass
header on all incoming traffic, because otherwise you must trust your
users to not set that header and bypass the GitLab rate limiter.

Note that the bypass only works if the header is set to `1`.

Requests that bypassed the rate limiter because of the bypass header
are marked with `"throttle_safelist":"throttle_bypass_header"` in
[`production_json.log`](../../../administration/logs.md#production_jsonlog).

To disable the bypass mechanism, make sure the environment variable
`GITLAB_THROTTLE_BYPASS_HEADER` is unset or empty.

## Allowing specific users to bypass authenticated request rate limiting

Similarly to the bypass header described above, it is possible to allow
a certain set of users to bypass the rate limiter. This only applies
to authenticated requests: with unauthenticated requests, by definition
GitLab does not know who the user is.

The allowlist is configured as a comma-separated list of user IDs in
the `GITLAB_THROTTLE_USER_ALLOWLIST` environment variable. If you want
users 1, 53 and 217 to bypass the authenticated request rate limiter,
the allowlist configuration would be `1,53,217`.

- For [Omnibus](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/environment-variables.html),
  set `'GITLAB_THROTTLE_USER_ALLOWLIST' => '1,53,217'` in `gitlab_rails['env']`.
- For source installations, set `export GITLAB_THROTTLE_USER_ALLOWLIST=1,53,217`
  in `/etc/default/gitlab`.

Requests that bypassed the rate limiter because of the user allowlist
are marked with `"throttle_safelist":"throttle_user_allowlist"` in
[`production_json.log`](../../../administration/logs.md#production_jsonlog).

At application startup, the allowlist is logged in [`auth.log`](../../../administration/logs.md#authlog).

## Trying out throttling settings before enforcing them

> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/scalability/-/issues/629) in GitLab 13.6.

Trying out throttling settings can be done by setting the
`GITLAB_THROTTLE_DRY_RUN` environment variable to a comma-separated
list of throttle names.

The possible names are:

- `throttle_unauthenticated`
- `throttle_authenticated_api`
- `throttle_authenticated_web`
- `throttle_unauthenticated_protected_paths`
- `throttle_authenticated_protected_paths_api`
- `throttle_authenticated_protected_paths_web`

For example: trying out throttles for all authenticated requests to
non-protected paths could be done by setting
`GITLAB_THROTTLE_DRY_RUN='throttle_authenticated_web,throttle_authenticated_api'`.

To enable the dry-run mode for all throttles, the variable can be set
to `*`.

Setting a throttle to dry-run mode will log a message to the
[`auth.log`](../../../administration/logs.md#authlog) when it would
hit the limit, while letting the request continue as normal. The log
message will contain an `env` field set to `track`. The `matched`
field will contain the name of throttle that was hit.

It is important to set the environment variable **before** enabling
the rate limiting in the settings. The settings in the admin panel
take effect immediately, while setting the environment variable
requires a restart of all the Puma processes.

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