There is no secret to obtaining a list of recent servants from a hostcache like connect1.gnutellanet.com or any other hostcache. They are mostly all just currently online servants (they just never shut down) for example, connect1.gnutellanet.com is a bearshare servant.

Just like a servant that is currently not accepting connections, when you make a connection to a hostcache, you must go through the gnutella handshake, right after you send your '200 OK', ping them and they will respond with a number of pongs containing known servants. They then disconnect and you go on your merry way attempting to connect to the ip's in the pongs you just received.

There is nothing 'majical' about connecting to a hostcache.