Bandwidth throttling consists in the intentional limitation of the communication speed (bytes or kilobytes per second), of the ingoing (received) or outgoing (sent) data in a network node or in a network device.
The data speed and rendering may be limited depending on various parameters and conditions.
Limiting the speed of data sent by a data originator (a client computer or a server computer) is much more efficient than limiting the speed in an intermediate network device between client and server because while in the first case usually no network packets are lost, in the second case network packets can be lost / discarded whenever ingoing data speed overcomes the bandwidth limit or the capacity of device and data packets cannot be temporarily stored in a buffer queue (because it is full or it does not exist); the usage of such a buffer queue is to absorb the peaks of incoming data for very short time lapse.
In the second case discarded data packets can be resent by transmitter and received again.
When a low level network device discards incoming data packets usually can also notify that fact to data transmitter in order to slow down the transmission speed (see also network congestion).
NOTE: Bandwidth throttling should not be confused with rate limiting which operates on client requests at application server level and/or at network management level (i.e. by inspecting protocol data packets). Rate limiting can also help in keeping peaks of data speed under control.
These bandwidth limitations can be implemented:
at (a client program or a server program, i.e. ftp server, web server, etc.) which can be run and configured to throttle data sent through network or even to throttle data received from network (by reading data at most at a throttled amount per second);
at (typically done by an ISP).
The (client/server program) is usually perfectly because it is a choice of the client manager or the server manager (by server administrator) to limit or not to limit the speed of data received from remote program via network or the speed of data sent to target program (server or client).
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