Is it possible to bypass SIP INVITE rate limiting during JMeter load test ramp-up?

Voice & Telephony
1

Is it possible to configure Genesys Cloud to accept higher SIP INVITE rates without triggering 429 errors during a controlled load test? We are running a performance validation for a new contact center site. The goal is to simulate a sudden spike of 500 concurrent inbound calls per second using JMeter SIP plugin. The environment is Genesys Cloud Pure Cloud, latest version. The SIP trunk is configured with standard QoS settings.

When the JMeter script ramps up to 200 calls per second, the Genesys Cloud SIP endpoints start returning 429 Too Many Requests. The response headers show a rate limit reset time that is too aggressive for our test pattern. The error log shows SIP 429: Rate limit exceeded for tenant. This happens even though the configured SIP trunk capacity is set to 10,000 concurrent calls. The WebSocket connection for real-time metrics also drops at this point, making it hard to correlate the exact moment of failure.

We have checked the API documentation for /api/v2/outbound/campaigns and /api/v2/architect/flows, but these do not seem to control SIP trunk rate limits. The admin console shows no option to increase the INVITE rate threshold. Is there a hidden configuration or a specific header we can send to whitelist our test IP range? We need to verify that the Architect flow can handle the burst before production launch. The current behavior suggests a hard limit that we cannot override. This blocks our capacity planning phase. Any guidance on how to adjust these limits for testing purposes would be helpful. We are trying to avoid false positives in our performance reports. The JMeter logs show the 429 errors starting exactly at 195 requests per second. The latency before the error is normal, around 50ms. After the limit is hit, the latency spikes to over 2 seconds before the connection is refused.

Thank you for any insights.

2

TL;DR: SIP INVITE rate limits are tenant-level hard caps. You cannot bypass them via config. Use genesys-cloud CLI to verify current limits and adjust test ramp.

The 429 errors are not a configuration error. They are a protective mechanism at the platform edge. Genesys Cloud enforces a maximum SIP INVITE rate per tenant to prevent DoS conditions. This limit is not exposed in the admin UI. It is not configurable via the REST API.

Attempting to “bypass” this by manipulating QoS on the SIP trunk will fail. The rate limiting happens before the trunk logic is evaluated.

To proceed with your validation, you must align the test with the platform’s capacity. The standard approach is to use the CLI to inspect the tenant’s current state and then throttle the JMeter script.

# Check current tenant limits (requires admin scope)
genesys-cloud admin tenant get-limits --id <tenant-id>

# Example JMeter CSV config to enforce step-ramp
# Thread Group:
# Ramp-up Period: 60s
# Steps: 10
# Step Duration: 6s

The get-limits command often reveals the specific INVITE threshold for your tier. If the limit is, for example, 50 INVITEs/sec, your test must not exceed this.

A better strategy for load validation is to simulate the spike using the Analytics API or CTI Simulator rather than raw SIP. This avoids the SIP stack bottleneck entirely and focuses the load on the routing and agent allocation logic.

If you must use SIP, implement a dynamic throttle in JMeter:

  1. Use a JSR223 Listener to monitor response codes.
  2. If 429 is detected, pause the thread group for X seconds.
  3. Resume with a lower concurrency.

This mimics real-world retry logic and provides more accurate data on system stability under pressure. Do not force the ramp. The platform will reject it.

3

This is caused by… the platform-level enforcement you mentioned.
Is it possible to configure Genesys Cloud to accept higher SIP INVITE rates without triggering 429 errors during a controlled load test?
The 429s are indeed hard caps. No config tweak bypasses this edge protection.

4

My usual workaround is to adjusting the SIP signaling timers rather than fighting the hard cap.

  • Reduce the T1 and T2 values in JMeter to mimic faster carrier handshakes.
  • Verify the BYOC trunk’s heartbeat interval isn’t causing registration churn during the spike.
  • Align the test ramp with the carrier’s actual SIP INVITE throughput to avoid false positives.
5

To fix this easily, this is…

<configElement name="Ramp-Up" value="Linear"/>

Switch from step ramp to linear in JMeter. The 429s hit because the platform sees a wall of invites instead of a smooth curve.