Network throttling deliberately delays client requests to keep Kafka resource usage within enforced limits. It protects brokers from faulty or malicious producers and consumers while distributing capacity among clients. section 13.3
Kafka applies throttling through quotas that can be configured by client, user, or default scope:
- Set producer and consumer byte rates or limit the percentage of broker CPU time allocated to a client. section 13.3
- Prefer user-level quotas when authentication is available; client IDs can be changed arbitrarily by clients. section 13.3
- Treat quotas as overload protection rather than strict guarantees because enforcement occurs separately on each broker. section 13.3
kafka-configs.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 \
--alter \
--entity-type clients \
--entity-default \
--add-config 'producer_byte_rate=1048576,\
consumer_byte_rate=2097152,request_percentage=100'
Configure conservative default producer and consumer rates, then override them for clients with different resource requirements. section 13.3
