I've been a die-hard user of Limewire since ... I don't even know what version, maybe 1.4? I've tinkered with Bearshare but prefer the open-source nature of LW. I've also paid for PRO since the week it was introduced.

Still...

According to Limewire.com's own stats the network is in steady decline. Everyone's switching to Kazaa despite it's spyware-laden proprietary nature. What the heck?

Now, the latest thing I've discovered is that LW ultrapeers are "Dropping" most of their I/O; using LW 2.85's Connections screen you can see (for the first time) long-term stats on Dropped packets. Bearshare, Morpheus, and the other Win32-native apps don't seem to have this problem so I suspect it's a problem with Java's network performance. I've emailed bugs@limewire.com about this (as an aside to a specific bug I found) but haven't received a response.

Since Java 1.4.x is supposed to be better at network I/O, I've been trying to get my machine (LW 2.8.5 Pro w/ Java 1.4.1) nominated to ultrapeer. I've been trying for about 2 weeks but I haven't been able to leave it running for more than 3 days at a time. I've never become an ultrapeer and, Yes, I have that Option enabled.

What do other people think? Is the gnutella "experiment" over?