Leaky Bucket
A traffic-shaping algorithm that models a bounded bucket draining at a controlled rate to smooth bursts into a limited output rate.
A leaky bucket queues incoming work and releases it at a controlled rate. Once the bounded queue is full, additional work may be rejected, preventing a burst from being transferred unchanged to the downstream service.
A Token Bucket can explicitly accumulate burst capacity, whereas a leaky bucket focuses on smoothing the output rate. The appropriate choice depends on burst tolerance and downstream capacity.