I personally have had no problems connecting in Limewire and I've tried three different versions today:

Limewire 2.5.5 on Mac OS 9.2.2
Limewire 2.5.5 on Mac OS X
Limewire 2.5.5 on Win2K (using Virtual PC on top of OSX)

on a Powerbook G4 with a 56k connection (Ya.com)

However, I have noticed wacky port numbers appearing in the connections window in extreme ranges (1472 - 67826!!) when pinging the host-caches as well as a large number of small variations (6348, 6343) much more than I normally see. Unsurprisingly, LW failed to connect when the really weird numbers were appearing. Oddly though , Limewire did connect to a Mynapster Ultrapeer on port 4134 (see image) for a couple of minutes. Perhaps these unlikely port numbers (and maybe dodgy host IPs too) are related to the connection problems of today.

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I've got Limewire 2.5.5 running in Mac OS 9.2.2 (yesterday I was using OSX) and I'm still getting strange port numbers with my 56k connection going full blast. There are definitely more non-6346 port numbers appearing. Though I'm still having none of the connection problems that other users have mentioned. All three versions of Limewire (2.5.5 for OS9,OSX,Win2K) that I've used over the last couple of days have connected more or less straight off using the default host-cache list.

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Forgive me for trying to create X-files in Mulder-like fashion.

I agree that our cases the strange port numbers don't affect connectivity and the explanation of people circumventing blocked ports is logical. I have also seen non-6346 ports appearing before but up until now in very small proportions although I have to admit that I don't spend much time staring at the connections window as it's not exactly a thrilling passtime.

I don't understand why the limewire router hostcache being down would have such a major effect (it hasn't affected me) and nobody has come up with any other logical explanation. I'm concerned that whatever it is could happen to me - Murphy's Law dictates that all those who brag about having got off scot free will suffer in the end.

Incidentally I also agree that some of the 'I can't connect' posts are a bit trollish:
"I've tried Limewire for two minutes and it didn't connect" ergo Limewire is crap.

Regarding the weird port numbers, I was going to ask about that too.

I'm also finding that the connections are very unstable. I can connect if I use the bearshare3 connection, but I can't seem to hold onto any host for more than a few minutes. They're constantly shuffling through and not "locking" on. Makes it very hard to download! I do re-searches constantly, but can't seem to get much to download. Could the weird ports have something to do with that?

Also, because I have no idea about these things, if I use the default port: 6346 (or is it 6347) as my listening port, am I really connected to these other hosts with different ports? Kinda sounds like a stupid question, but LimeWire sure has been acting strange these past couple of days.

Thanks for any input.


Mac G4
OS 9.1
384 MB RAM
LW 2.4.4

Scully, I have to admit that maybe this time your scientific reasoning wins.

So let's follow this argument through:

1. Tens of thousands of kids going back to school move their computer from home to the dorm room.

2. The home IPs held in hostcaches suddenly become redundant and when people start up Limewire they can't lock on to a host as many of those listed are now inactive.

3. Those affected are mainly in North America since apart from the central host-caches , Limewire also has a local hostcache (gnutella.net in the Limewire folder) containing a list of [stable] hosts that Limewire has encountered. I assume that these would preferably be from geographically neighbouring IPs, so that people in the USA or Canada where the computer shifting phenomenon is on a very large scale would be heavily affected while those in other parts of the world (such as Europe) where this does not happen to the same extent would not be seriously affected.

4. The situation is aggravated by the failure of router.limewire.com

5. Other clients such as Shareaza, Gnucleus (and clones such as Morpheus) have decentralised hostcache systems (GWcache and Lynn cache) and so are not affected.

6. Meanwhile, since many schools block port 6346 [and sometimes others], the school kids change their port number to try and circumvent this.

Sounds plausible to me.