diff --git a/crates/net/eth-wire-types/src/message.rs b/crates/net/eth-wire-types/src/message.rs
index 2dbcbf8c26..00817cbe37 100644
--- a/crates/net/eth-wire-types/src/message.rs
+++ b/crates/net/eth-wire-types/src/message.rs
@@ -254,6 +254,30 @@ impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> EthMessage<N> {
             Self::Receipts(_) => EthMessageID::Receipts,
         }
     }
+
+    /// Returns true if the message variant is a request.
+    pub const fn is_request(&self) -> bool {
+        matches!(
+            self,
+            Self::GetBlockBodies(_) |
+                Self::GetBlockHeaders(_) |
+                Self::GetReceipts(_) |
+                Self::GetPooledTransactions(_) |
+                Self::GetNodeData(_)
+        )
+    }
+
+    /// Returns true if the message variant is a response to a request.
+    pub const fn is_response(&self) -> bool {
+        matches!(
+            self,
+            Self::PooledTransactions(_) |
+                Self::Receipts(_) |
+                Self::BlockHeaders(_) |
+                Self::BlockBodies(_) |
+                Self::NodeData(_)
+        )
+    }
 }
 
 impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> Encodable for EthMessage<N> {
diff --git a/crates/net/network/src/eth_requests.rs b/crates/net/network/src/eth_requests.rs
index f273e56f03..e0d40dfb95 100644
--- a/crates/net/network/src/eth_requests.rs
+++ b/crates/net/network/src/eth_requests.rs
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ const MAX_HEADERS_SERVE: usize = 1024;
 /// `SOFT_RESPONSE_LIMIT`.
 const MAX_BODIES_SERVE: usize = 1024;
 
-/// Maximum size of replies to data retrievals.
+/// Maximum size of replies to data retrievals: 2MB
 const SOFT_RESPONSE_LIMIT: usize = 2 * 1024 * 1024;
 
 /// Manages eth related requests on top of the p2p network.
@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ where
 
         for hash in request.0 {
             if let Some(block) = self.client.block_by_hash(hash).unwrap_or_default() {
-                let (_, body) = block.split();
+                let body = block.into_body();
                 total_bytes += body.length();
                 bodies.push(body);
 
diff --git a/crates/net/network/src/session/active.rs b/crates/net/network/src/session/active.rs
index 475ede1baf..6781c2032a 100644
--- a/crates/net/network/src/session/active.rs
+++ b/crates/net/network/src/session/active.rs
@@ -54,6 +54,19 @@ const SAMPLE_IMPACT: f64 = 0.1;
 /// Amount of RTTs before timeout
 const TIMEOUT_SCALING: u32 = 3;
 
+/// Restricts the number of queued outgoing messages for larger responses:
+///  - Block Bodies
+///  - Receipts
+///  - Headers
+///  - `PooledTransactions`
+///
+/// With proper softlimits in place (2MB) this targets 10MB (4+1 * 2MB) of outgoing response data.
+///
+/// This parameter serves as backpressure for reading additional requests from the remote.
+/// Once we've queued up more responses than this, the session should priorotize message flushing
+/// before reading any more messages from the remote peer, throttling the peer.
+const MAX_QUEUED_OUTGOING_RESPONSES: usize = 4;
+
 /// The type that advances an established session by listening for incoming messages (from local
 /// node or read from connection) and emitting events back to the
 /// [`SessionManager`](super::SessionManager).
@@ -122,6 +135,11 @@ impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> ActiveSession<N> {
         self.queued_outgoing.shrink_to_fit();
     }
 
+    /// Returns how many responses we've currently queued up.
+    fn queued_response_count(&self) -> usize {
+        self.queued_outgoing.messages.iter().filter(|m| m.is_response()).count()
+    }
+
     /// Handle a message read from the connection.
     ///
     /// Returns an error if the message is considered to be in violation of the protocol.
@@ -596,6 +614,29 @@ impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> Future for ActiveSession<N> {
                     };
                 }
 
+                // check whether we should throttle incoming messages
+                if this.received_requests_from_remote.len() > MAX_QUEUED_OUTGOING_RESPONSES {
+                    // we're currently waiting for the responses to the peer's requests which aren't
+                    // queued as outgoing yet
+                    //
+                    // Note: we don't need to register the waker here because we polled the requests
+                    // above
+                    break 'receive
+                }
+
+                // we also need to check if we have multiple responses queued up
+                if this.queued_outgoing.messages.len() > MAX_QUEUED_OUTGOING_RESPONSES &&
+                    this.queued_response_count() > MAX_QUEUED_OUTGOING_RESPONSES
+                {
+                    // if we've queued up more responses than allowed, we don't poll for new
+                    // messages and break the receive loop early
+                    //
+                    // Note: we don't need to register the waker here because we still have
+                    // queued messages and the sink impl registered the waker because we've
+                    // already advanced it to `Pending` earlier
+                    break 'receive
+                }
+
                 match this.conn.poll_next_unpin(cx) {
                     Poll::Pending => break,
                     Poll::Ready(None) => {
@@ -740,6 +781,16 @@ pub(crate) enum OutgoingMessage<N: NetworkPrimitives> {
     Raw(RawCapabilityMessage),
 }
 
+impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> OutgoingMessage<N> {
+    /// Returns true if this is a response.
+    const fn is_response(&self) -> bool {
+        match self {
+            Self::Eth(msg) => msg.is_response(),
+            _ => false,
+        }
+    }
+}
+
 impl<N: NetworkPrimitives> From<EthMessage<N>> for OutgoingMessage<N> {
     fn from(value: EthMessage<N>) -> Self {
         Self::Eth(value)