title: When does DynamoDB throttle request?
body: <p>In the answer to "<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9423170/how-is-amazon-dynamodb-throughput-calculated-and-limited">How is Amazon DynamoDB throughput calculated and limited?</a>" it's been suggested, that DynamoDB throttles request whenever you exceed provisioned throughput on per second basis. However, this contradicts my experience.</p>
  
  <p>I've table where I post multiple rows, often the number of rows way exceeding provisioned write capacity. This happens in short bursts. At one point I've even got 5 minutes average above provisioned capacity. OTOH, 15 minutes average is below capacity. I haven't got any throttled request in that period. </p>
  
  <p>5 minutes average peaks at 8.053 with provisioned capacity of 6:
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vYjGm.png" alt="5 minutes average"></p>
  
  <p>15 minutes average peaks well below provisioned capacity:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/zbqvC.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>So when does DynamoDB throttle requests? What kind of average does it take in account? How high above provisioned capacity can the burst be before it gets throttled?</p>