Tim wrote : By avoiding blocking on reads or writes it enables a small number of threads to handle a large amound of "connections". If reads or writes were blocking that wouldn't be possible. That's the crux of the matter. Well, read again my previous post. I am quoting it here for completness: "First there is the fact that a non-blocking IO implementation, complete with readiness selection, allows a single thread (or a precisely limited number of threads) to efficiently do what in a thread-per-connection model would take a number of threads equal with the number of connections. This approach a) avoids thread context switching that becomes toxic after the number of threads in use reaches a certain threshold and b) prevents using the thread scheduler as a substitute for a readiness selection mechanism (threads that suddenly get something to read, or write, are un-blocked by the scheduler, which acts as a "de facto" readiness detector)." So I really don't see what we're arguing about. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3980789#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...