Comment by roenxi

> An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients.

The metaphor might be a bit strained, because a congestion protocol is fundamentally determining the system state by testing it with an optimistic request for what the client wants then responding based on the server answer or lack thereof. Which is to say, the typical asker strategy.

Having a protocol at all might be more of a guesser thing though - good luck getting to index.html by sending "Hey my server friend can I have a copy of index.html pls?" to port 80 in with netcat. Very clear request, unlikely to get much consideration by nginx even if it is willing to hand over the page.