Build a Distributed Rate Limiter with Redis & Node.js

Overview of projectOverviewRate limiting comes up constantly in system design interviews at FAANG companies, but most student projects just wrap NGINX or use a pre-built library — which reads as "I followed the tutorial, not I understand the system." This guide is different: we're building a distributed adaptive rate limiter and API gateway from scratch, with a Redis Lua sliding-window-counter engine, thresholds that self-adjust based on real-time latency, a dashboard that shows quota consumption, and full observability with OpenTelemetry. By the end, you'll have a portfolio project that signals genuine backend systems depth.Why this project?Rate limiting is a core system design interview question at FAANG companies. Most students use pre-built libraries or NGINX wrappers—you'll build from scratch with atomic Redis Lua scripts and adaptive thresholds that adjust to real-world latency. That signals depth.What you will learnDistributed algorithms (sliding-window counter math)Atomic opera

Build a Distributed Rate Limiter with Redis & Node.js

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