The different numbers of connections you see depend on whether you're connecting as a leaf or as an ultrapeer.
When you're a leaf, you connect to either 3 ultrapeers (LW basic) or 5 ultrapeers (LW Pro). Ultrapeers are people with relatively fast connections who handle more of the search traffic & shield the leaves from unnecessary traffic (so the leaf sees searches which relate to files that they're sharing).
Peers are other ultrapeers!
When you're connected as an ultrapeer, you'll start off connecting to around 23 peers...ie other ultrapeers. Then, more leaves & peers will connect over time...there can be around around 50 connections in all.
The network decides who connects as an ultrapeer. Providing you're not firewalled & have a reasonably fast connection, if the network needs ultrapeers then you'll connect as one.
I'm not sure that there are any big advantages to being an ultrapeer, you tend to see fewer uploads but searching might be a bit better when looking for rarer files. Have a look at stief's post below.
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/216153-post5.html
And if you want a better explanation of leaves & ultrapeers, have a read here.
GnuFU en - Gnufu
This info is from the BearShare technical FAQ, & is a good explanation of both connection types
Quote:
Q: What are Ultrapeers, Leaves, and Peers?
A: Ultrapeers are the backbone of the Gnutella network. An Ultrapeer handles most Gnutella traffic, shielding its Leaves from this traffic. Ultrapeers accept connections from the Leaves, giving them access to the network and handling their requests. Ultrapeers also connect to each other, bringing the network together, Leaves do not connect to each other. Leaves commonly do not meet the requirements for being an Ultrapeer. A Leaf now connects to two Ultrapeers, one used actively and the other kept just in case the first should fail. New versions of BearShare regulate when you become an Ultrapeer based on a strict set of criteria and the overall need of the network.
"Peer" literally means "Equal to one's rank", an Ultrapeer then means "Beyond one's rank". A Leaf is so named because it acts like a leaf on a tree, not connecting to any other leaf. Ultrapeers see other Ultrapeers as equal so they refer to each other as "Peers". A Leaf would refer to other Leaves also as Peers but since they never connect directly this does not come up.
If Ultrapeers are the backbone then without them all peers would be the same and form a much larger skeleton. Messages such as queries would have to travel further to reach the same number of people and so achieve the same result, that would take up much more bandwidth. Ultrapeers are chosen from the more capable computers and are able to form more simultaneous connections than many computers can, by doing this it takes fewer 'hops' for a message to reach it's target. |