Hi Tony. Thanks for the feedback. The assumption is that even high-bandwidth users would rather be leaves than ultrapeers if possible. That gives you more bandwidth for uploads and downloads. There is actually a hidden, unsupported way of preventing LW from becoming a leaf: just set the EVER_SUPERNODE_CAPABLE and FORCE_SUPERNODE_MODE properties to true in the limewire.props file in your limewire install directory. But obviously we're trying to make this all transparent to the user.

When in leaf mode, you will see very few incoming queries in your monitor, as the ultrapeer filters out most of them. The number of hosts reported in the connections tab is actually only the number of other ultrapeer hosts reported within the last few minutes; it is not an indicator of the horizon size. (Horizon estimates have been disabled for months; that's why the connections tab is disabled by default.)

However, we are aware that leaves sometimes do not get as many search results, and we're working on ways of making sure that leaves get high-quality, well-connected ultrapeers. Do note that result "quality" has nothing to do with ultrapeers.

Again, thanks for your help.

-Christopher Rohrs