Travelling wave (TW) differential protection fully utilizes the fault information contained in TW at both terminals of a transmission line, so it's a protection with high reliability and high selectivity. However, because TW differential protection needs a large amount of communication, it cannot be put into practical use. This paper proposes a TW differential protection which is based on equivalent travelling wave (ETW). Fault information is not lost during the process of getting ETW, so the proposed protection has the same reliability and selectivity with traditional TW differential protection. Because only several modulus maxima are needed to be sent to the opposite terminal, the traffic is largely reduced and the protection can operate much more rapidly. Extensive simulations validate the proposed protection.