> I'm glad you have an opinion of your own. But please do not
> force it on others. We are all entitled to our own opinion.

I didn't mean to. of course everyone should think for himself.

> this is NOT about civil rights, so don't even go there

I never said that. it's about fairness. see the difference ?

> What you fail to take into account is that 30 hosts are busy for
> 1/30 of the time that a 5 hosts would be busy. This, in effect,
> would always leave free hosts.

Which is true for modem users as well. when i download a file from 3 sources, they are used for 1/3 of the time. so i don't decrease the numer of upload slots either.

> Most modem users (the majority of the network) are forced to
> be freeloaders because uploading anything would not allow
> them to download anything. If they had more bandwidth freed
> up, they would be more willing to share.

Make them share. Don't allow them to decrease their upload bandwidth as they like. I for instance allow uploading with half my bandwidth and I don't like being taken for a freeloader just because I use a modem.

> right now Swarming will not help modem users. Perhaps it will
> when their bandwidth is freed up a bit by more efficient
> Gnutella protocol standards.

Look what i meant. I'm giving 4 kbps upload bandwith to the network. I am tired of having downloads with 1-2 kbps even at times when noone downloads from me. i don't know why you think that traffic eats up all my bandwith, for this is not what i observe. when i download multiple different files i get a much larger download speed than 1-2 kbps, but most times i don't want to download 2 different files. i want to download one file from 2 sources. where is the great difference concerning network performance ?

> This might shock you, but I am a modem user too. And yes, I do
> share. About 6 GBs worth of stuff.

It doesn't. So do I (although it's not 6 gigs i share).

i would like to swarm in order to use all my bandwidth more effective, just as you explained. i don't see why i can download two or three different files at once, but i cannot download one file from two or three different sources.

at last i would like to say that i live in a region where i cannot get a cable or dsl connection. also i do not really want more bandwith than i have. all i want is to max out what i have.

if my last post was too offensive to you, i beg your pardon. i didn't mean to start a war between highspeed and modem users. i just want fair swarming. i do see that we can profit of the feature as well as they do. i don't see why we should harm the network more than they do. as far as i understand you, it all depends on whether or not network traffic is the main reason for my low transfer rate. i think it isn't. when i am interested in one file only, i am definitely wasting bandwith.