I've got the same problem since I upgraded to 4.9.30. I upgraded to 33 and it's still happening. Upgraded my Java, still happening.
I ran the tests from Grandpa's (I think) reply. First test got "It worked!"
Second test did not provide a true/false response, but took me to another thread "For those who can't connect."
Went to Speakeasy and got a way low test off the L.A. server. Unplugged my dsl modem for 10 seconds and tried again, this time with the San Francisco server, a bit farther from here than L.A. and got Download 675 kbps, Upload 121. Tried L.A. again and got Download 698, Upload 110.
What Limewire is currently doing is running at Turbo when I'm working on the computer. If I leave it for thirty minutes, Limewire goes to sleep. I click with the mouse on anything and LW says it's waking the connection. This is the common occurrance. But some times I come back and it's just plain disconnected and I have to go to file and connect again. It's so annoying. I used to leave it running day and night. Overnight, my big files would have completed the download, but not anymore. Plus this shuts down or slows down the 8 folks I've got uploading big files, too.
I'm running an emachine with XP Home, with an AMD 2600+ processor, 512 MB RAM, minus whatever the video card uses.
The XP firewall is turned off, so I'm only running Norton Internet Security and Symantic virus scanner. LW is on the permit list, though I get boxes continually asking me if I want to let this or that web address through, which may or may not have anything to do with LW. It advises me to permit always, so I do. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, well.
Please oh master programmers, please track this idiosyncrasy down and fix it soon. I love LW, and I don't want to start looking around for another program that works.