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Ive posted this in another thread... but it attracted our friendly
redbaiter flames.. so am reposting

Ive spent the afternoon researching this protocol (as I had the view to
put together my own client) and I remembered this thread,
http://p2pnet.net/story/5172
The strategy proposed by BitTorrent is named “tit-for-tat”, meaning
that a client will preferably cooperate with the peers cooperating with
him. Practically, this means that each client measures how fast it can
download from each peer and, in turn, will serve those from whom it has
the better download rates. This strategy is implemented for all but one
slot which is attributed to an interested client, regardless of its upload
rate. This so-called “optimistic unchoking” allows for the discovery
of better peers than those currently selected (i.e. those with higher
upload rates).

--
Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked

The best way to get the right answer on usenet is to post the wrong one.