Rate Limiting and DDoS Protection for Laravel Apps on Deploynix

Your Laravel application is live. Traffic is growing. Then one morning, your monitoring alerts fire. Response times spike to thirty seconds. Your server's CPU is pinned at 100%. Your database connection pool is exhausted. Is it a genuine traffic spike from a successful marketing campaign, or is someone attacking your application? The difference between a traffic spike and a DDoS attack matters less than your preparation for both. Whether it's a bot scraping your entire site, a disgruntled user hammering your API, or a coordinated attack from a botnet, the defense strategies overlap significantly. This article covers rate limiting and DDoS protection across every layer of your stack, from your Laravel application code through Nginx, Cloudflare, and Deploynix's firewall rules. Understanding the Threat Landscape Before diving into solutions, it helps to understand what you're defending against. Brute-force attacks target login forms, password reset endpoints, and API authentication. Attac