To connect to the network, the first thing you need are IP numbers of servants that are allready connected. To get such numbers, do one of the following:

Connect to 'gnutellahosts.com:6346' and send a Gnutella ping.
Gnutellahosts.com will pong back with 10 IP addresses and then disconnect.

or
Fetch and parse the file at 'http://www.clip2.com/gnutellahosts.txt'This file contains 10 addresses.

i've never tryed any of those things, i just got that info. from this page 'http://dss.clip2.com/hls.html'

Once you got an IP number, make a connection. I am not such how to do that, but this guy wrote this on a other post. "GNUTELLA CONNECT/0.4/n/n" so try sending that to a gnutella servant and see what happens.

You have to decide how many conections to keep open. Some programs i've used let the used type in how many conncetions they want.

when does a servant accept conncections?
Always unless you got a reason to refuse like if you already have enough.

'http://www.limewire.com/developer/pings.htm' that site will give you lots of info. on sending pings.