Well, yes, it _could_ increase the number of seach requests to the remaining clients that are sharing files. BUT... I don't think it would do so significantly, or even at all.

Think about it this way... In theory, every node will see every search once on a good, healthy network with todays system. If this is true, my suggestion would not actually increase the traffic through the sharing nodes at all. Granted this is a best case scenario and likely is not actually true in the real world. But I definately don't think traffic through those nodes would increase 10x.

Lets say that today, a search may propogate through only 1/3 of the network. With my suggestion, traffic MAY increase 3x in this case through the "sharing" nodes while reducing traffic everywhere else.

The benefits I see from this sort of strategy are that small TTLs will more easily propogate the "sharing" network. Searching will be much faster and much more thourough while decereasing overall network activity.

It would not break the network, but it would make it more efficient (granted, at some expense of the sharing nodes).

Oh, yeah, and while I am thinking about it, another change that would have to be made for this to work is that "sharing" clients would NEED to accept LOTS of incomming connections from "non-sharing" clients, no number limits or at least a very large limit (30-50). Else, if only the sharing nodes could accpet incomming connections, the network would quickly run out of open spaces a non-sharing client could connect to. This should not be a problem as the "non-sharing" clients should only be sending out an occasional search querry and getting some responses back. Unless he is a spammer, in which case it would be easier to block him.

Is anyone working on some sort of gnutella network simulator program? A network simulator would go a long way to answering some of these and other questions. It would give us a better understanding of how the viral population network model of gnutella really operates and how to improve its efficiency.

I admit that I may not know what I am taling about. (I am a mechanical engineer by proffession. We always made fun of Comp Sci and Comp Eng people).