I have LimeWire Pro. Ever since the last upgrade (a few weeks ago), the stats for files available have been downright awful. It used to show that over 100,000 total files were available. Now it's usually in the low thousands and sometimes not even that. Not surprisingly, I usually can't find what I'm looking for now. I used to sing LimeWire's praises to anyone who would listen. Now I feel so disapointed and frustrated. What happened? Am I the only one who experienced this? If so, was it only a fluke that I noticed it after the last upgrade? Any advice would be most appreciated. If it helps, here's what I have:

Windows 2000 Professional
Cable Modem
LimeWire Client 2.4.4 Pro
ZoneAlarm Pro 2.6.84

The change in stats is nothing to do with LimeWire. Morpheus ultrapeers do not support reporting of stats. Since most ultrapeers are now morpheus clients, the stats have dropped way off.

This isn't entirely a bad thing. The reporting of stats took up bandwidth. By not reporting stats there is more bandwidth to be used for downloads.

However, the only way to tell how well connected you are is to do a search and see how many results you get.

At the same time, the network does appear to have deteriorated recently - although this varies a lot. Much of the problem may be related to morpheus - since morpheus now makes up the vast majority of clients on the network. This doesn't mean that all morpheus ultrapeers are bad - there are plenty of excellent ones. But there are also a proportion of very bad ones.

Mark

I'm noticing that although I get lots of search results, the ultrapeers get knocked off constantly. I'll sometimes be downloading over 10 files and then all of a sudden, they all slow to 0 kb/s or begin requery and I check my connections and they will all be gone. Sometimes a couple will stay on, but the rest ~ gone! It happens alot these days. Very strange. I wouldn't think that everybody is quitting LimeWire (or their respective client) at the same time! But it's irritating when you have about 100 incompletes waiting to finish.

I've seen this happen occassionally. It usually means that there is some communication problem locally - an excessive number of data packets are being lost.

I think this could be due to the local ISP server being overloaded or doing some housekeeping - or perhaps excessive line noise. I don't think the problem is specific to gnutella - I think it affects all internet communication equally.

Could you check to see if you can browse the web when you next see this problem? - If web sites come up excessively slowly it indicates that the problem is an ISP one, not a LimeWire one (and vice versa, of course).

Mark

Well, thank you very much! I was thinking maybe something like that. I was sure hoping it wasn't Gnutella or LW. I'll check it out. But, even with more memory, I still have alot of conflicts with LW and other apps. I don't usually run any others while LW is running. But, I will quit LW (because it's a pain when it does it, anyway) to check.

Much appreciation for the reply.

Thanks, Treatid, for your thoughtful response. I have since done the most recent upgrade (2.5.5 Pro) and the stats have improved (although now, thanks to your explanation, I don't view that as a perfect indicator of how many files are available).

Well, I hope this "network degradation" improves with time. I really miss the "good old days" when I could find whatever I was looking for and download it in a snap!