Multiply that by thousands of people on tens of thousands of threads...
But what do I know? I only had my first computer job in like 1975.
What’s with the attitude? This will make NO difference on FreeRepublic. To prove it, go to Tools and select Page Info. Then click Media. This is the content that would be simultaneously downloaded. Notice the fact that there are two files on the browse page - favicon.ico (2.19KB) and speaker.gif (.87KB), both of which are cached.
On any thread with images, FR is not hosting the images. Thus they will download simultaneously with the FR connection no matter what your value is set at.