We've released the beta version of LimeWire 3.6.0. As usual, the free version is available at:

http://www.limewire.com/english/content/beta.shtml

and the pro version is available from your pro download page.

The major improvement in 3.6.0 is the use of "out-of-band" replies to your searches. This is pretty technical change, so I'll describe it in some detail. Here's how query responses worked prior to 3.6.0:

When you sent out a query on Gnutella, anyone who received the query and had responses would send those responses back along the same route that it came, i.e. it would send it back through every LimeWire that had originally forwarded the query. This is inefficient because the LimeWires that would route the responses could be on opposite sides of the planet, forcing the LimeWire network to do much more work than necessary to get back to the querier, even circling the globe multiple times!

With LimeWire 3.6.0, however, those responses will be sent directly back to the querier instead of being sent along such an inefficient route. This allows those queries to be sent back by extremely high performing IP routers that will always clobber LimeWire's network topology in terms of performance.

The result of all of this is that the responses will get back to you much more quickly. You will especially see a speed improvement with queries for rare content because these queries travel further out on the network to get their results than queries for popular content. As a result, they have a greater distance (or number of "hops") to travel to get back to the original querier.

LimeWire 3.6.0 also adds a new "tip of the day" feature that cycles through helpful tips on using LimeWire. 3.6.0 also fixes a number of bugs from earlier versions.

Thanks for everyone's help testing the beta.

-LimeWire Team