What Is Choke Packet?

What's a choke packet? It's similar to taking a break from the Internet. You are undoubtedly familiar with "time-outs" in sports, in which a player is removed from the action for a short period to calm down and reflect on what they have done incorrectly. The Internet is no different; just like anything else, it has to be able to put itself on hold every once in a while. This is precisely what a choke packet does: it completely halts the flow of traffic, which results in congestion and compels other users to reduce the rate at which they transmit data until things return to normal. The ability to govern data flow via a network is made possible by a characteristic of packet-switching networks known as congestion management. Routers will use something called a "choke packet" to control congestion in a network. A router can send a choke packet to a specific source when it notices that it is receiving a significant quantity of packets from that source. The choke packet notifies the source node that it has to slow down its transmission speed by a certain percentage and then acknowledges the change by slowing down its transmission speed again at the same rate. Routers often use choke packets to notify users that they are utilizing an excessive amount of bandwidth; however, these packets can also prevent you from engaging in inappropriate or illegal activity. For instance, sending an ICMP source quench packet to your router will inform you (as well as everyone else on the network) that you are transmitting an excessive amount of data packets within a given time. To avoid slowing down the performance of the network for everyone else, this is typically used for activities such as downloading files and sending emails. On the other hand, if you were to transmit an ICMP source quench packet to another person's computer via the internet, it would effectively cause that person's machine to shut down, and they would be furious at you for doing so!