In a peer-to-peer network, one or more congestion events are defined that imply congestion on the network. In addition, one or more non-congestion events are defined that imply a lack of congestion on the network. When a node detects the occurrence of one or more of the defined congestion events, the node increases the spacing of connectionless protocol (e.g., UDP) packets that are sent by the node. When a node detects the occurrence of one or more of the defined non-congestion events, the node decreases the spacing of connectionless protocol packets that are sent by the node.