Over the past several months, I've almost totally abandoned LW in favor of Bit Torrent. BT is just so fast! True, BT downloads are only available for a limited time, but you can definitely get them while they're current. This is far preferable to LW and the other Gnutella clients, where I rarely get a search result (I've been trying to download Firefly episodes for FOREVER) and then I rarely get a successful download, at least for large files.

The beauty of BT -- for those who haven't used it -- is that the uploader doesn't have to send a complete copy of the file to every downloader. Instead, there's a "tracker" which keeps track of all the IPs that are downloading the file and shares that info amongst all the downloaders. The downloaders then coordinate amongst each other to swap the file 'chunks' that they're each missing. This clearly reduces the load on the original uploader.

Now, I know that LW has a new 'Partial File Sharing' protocol but I haven't seen any detailed explanation of it. My suspicion is that it merely allows someone with an incomplete download (like me with Firefly) to share what little they have with others. So, there are probably lots of people who, like me, have 1-2% of various Firefly episodes. Is there any plan to implement a more BT-like protocol, e.g. where LW tracks the IP of all downloaders and redistributes it to new downloaders? I know, I know, there's an obvious privacy concern there, but I really think this is what is necessary to improve the performance of the network. Maybe it could be implemented as an optional feature -- forgo privacy for better downloads.

P.S. I think the BT protocol is open-source so it might be possible to graft it onto LW? Shouldn't be more than an hour or two of work, I'm sure!

P.P.S. Maybe this could be a feature to differentiate the free and Pro versions of LW, i.e., "Limewire Pro now offers high-speed Bit Torrent file-transfers!"