An approach is provided for controlling a rate at which requests from a client computer will be received by a server application executed on a server computer. Requests are received by the server computer at different times from the client computer and time intervals between different pairs of successive requests are measured. The server computer determines that each time interval is within a predefined range of time intervals. Based on each time interval being within the predefined range, the server computer determines and blocks a denial of service attack or an overload of requests from the client computer.