Network Neutrality

[Dave Smith]

Jason Wright wrote:
> I'm not sure I agree with this. TCP does throttling already

What makes BitTorrent different from regular TCP connections is that you 
can have 200+ TCP BitTorrent connections acting as one huge "meta" 
connection to download a single resource. Even if TCP's congestion 
control mechanisms kick in to throttle down each individual TCP 
connection, the BitTorrent client will simply spawn more connections to 
make up for the lost bandwidth, until it saturates your link fully. This 
is why normal TCP congestion control doesn't actually control BitTorrent 
connections. It's really great for speedy downloads, but it clobbers 
other TCP connections, like the ability to check your gmail.

--Dave