* An important note about those who use BearShare is to connect to the network at least a couple times a month so your connection list stays up-to-date. I have noticed that 90-95% of the BearShare host addresses change over a 2 month period.

There are 'flash in the pan' users who try BearShare out for the first time but do not return. There are some who are casual users. And of course, there are dynamic hosts who change their address, some frequently. And there might also be some who only occasionally connect as Peers but connect generally as Leafs.

As for my experiment to attempt to create a connection list concentrating on static hosts, it is a little too difficult since there does not appear to be enough static bearshare hosts out there that connect as Peers and are consistent users of BearShare. I will keep trying for the time being. The idea of my list is to help those get connected for the first time or if they have not used BearShare for some time and are having connection problems (ie: connection list out-of-date.)

And as mentioned in my previous post, the longer you stay connected to the network per session, the better you will be seen as a good host to connect to. BearShare records the amount of time each user stays connected to the network and the GWebCache host sites will keep a rating system for the most reliable hosts to connect to, transferring the time they have spent online etc. If a user has not been online in over a week then their rating might go down.
Edit 5 March 2014: the above rating system only applies if you are not firewalled. BearShare will not cache the connection details of BearShare 5.1 Beta users who are firewalled. I've been manually adding such hosts to the connection file to keep the list as up to date as possible, even if that means firewalled ultrapeers, which is not good for the network. But keeping them listed below the non-firewalled ultrapeers. Obviously the BearShare ultrapeer population is not very large.

Peerless commented to me that if you cannot connect to BearShare hosts first time, restart BearShare and (hopefully) you will find them easier to find and connect to.