Hey, I had the same problem with connection to the connect1.gnutellahosts.com caches and getting a query message with an 88 byte payload. I think that this message is used to let BearShare users know if there is an update -- thus, in the method that reads a query, check to see if the last byte is 0 (null), as it should be, if it isn't, raise an exception and handle it in your host caching method by ignoring the message.

I believe you have to ping the host to start getting pongs in reply as the caches actually "attach" to the network and I believe they will route your ping to actual hosts. If you don't do so, the host will drop you and you won't get any pongs.

Hope this helps, like I said, I had the same problem and was just as confounded,

Andrew