How would you answer an interview scenario involving rate limiting?

For an interview scenario involving rate limiting, I would first clarify the business goal, scale, constraints, and the failure or quality attribute the interviewer wants to explore. Rate limiting controls how many requests a caller can make within a defined policy or time window. In this scenario, a public API is overwhelmed by one client. Explain where and how you would introduce rate limiting. For production, choose limits by identity and cost, return clear retry information, support bursts deliberately, and observe rejected traffic. I would then explain the main alternatives and tradeoffs, identify likely failure modes, and describe how I would validate the solution through testing, observability, security controls, and recovery or rollback planning.