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Choking

A peer in the choked state should not send block requests.  Block requests coming from a choked peer should be rejected.

Peers are in the choked state by default upon connection.

The local peer may unchoke the remote peer by sending an unchoke message.  It is one byte, the message type, 1.

The local peer may choke the remote peer by sending a choke message.  It is one byte, the message type, 0.

Generally a peer does not unchoke all it's connected peers at the same time.  A strategy of unchoking only a subset of peers, selected based upon remote interest and reciprocation speed, is used by many implementations.