i just downloaded limewire for mac os x and installed it. when i open the program, the title bar says disconnected/ sharing no files... i know i'm connected - i'm at a school w/a T1 line and my internet works just fine. i go to file and click "connect" & the little red circle at the bottom of the limewire box goes green for a second, then back to red & i'm still disconnected. what am i doing wrong? - kd

Nothing. Menu->View->Connections, and see if LW can connect to any hosts. If not, perhaps your school is blocking the gnutella traffic on port 6346.

Hello!

The fact that you are not even able to connect to the network and perform a search indicates that your School is blocking Gnutella meaning traffic on port 6346. If you where able to connect but you where not able to complete a download or any download was as slow as 1KB/s then that would have been an indication that your school network administrator would be smart and has not blocked the Gnutella port but instead had installed a packet analyser such as Packet Hound from Palisade Systems. This app analyses network traffic and once it find you are using your connection for suspicious activity it will first slow down the bandwidth for you to extremely slow 1KB/s and then finally drop your connection to a specific host and you will not be able to complete any larger downloads above 1MB in size. This app is basically Hell to Gnutella users.

But since yoou where not even able to connect to the network it indicates your school is actually blocking Gnutella traffic. That might seem as even smarter option then the one above but it is not in reality. That is because you could always change the port that you listen to other hosts(Ultrapeers).

I would suggest that you first try the common ports 6347,6348 and 6355.

If they do not work then try port 8080 the same as your browser. The disadvantage of this is ofcourse that you cannot have your browser open at the same time as LW. But LW should be able to connect to some other hosts(UltraPeers) that uses the same port as you.

To set a listening port go to preferences and then select Advanced and then Port. and here select the listening port and then click Apply and then OK.

One thing though before doing this you should first in LW deselect the option to automatically connect at startup to do that in preferences select Connections and uncheck the Connect at startup option then click apply then OK and then close LW. Now Re-launch LW and in preferences select the different port as described above then once again make a chek mark next to Connect at startup and click Apply then OK and once again close LW then once again Re-launch it. and it should now connect to Ultrapeers and the light will turn green.

One thing that I just figured out is that you might be a bit unpatient and if that is the case then all of the above information is irrelevant. After you have launched LW the light will not turn Green directly instead it will turn green only once it finds it first host to connect to which takes a bit longer these days since the introduction of Gwebcache and then it will turn green and start counting your shared files which could take quite some time if you are sharing many files. Also if this is the first time you are sharing your files with this version of LW it will hash/index thye files which could take really long time. For me it took a few hours because I have over 6000 files but I would estimate that it takes about 20 minutes in average the first time you launch LW if you are a moderate sharer.

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<img src="http://www.jordysworld.de/emoticons/blob16.gif">Sincerely Joakim Agren!

You described my problem perfectly..thank you.. Except this is my home computer so no one is blocking anything. Moreover, After I first installed, I connected no problems (I think it connected automatically).
What should I do.
I can't even find a preference setting...does he mean "options"?
Please help

Select -

Tools, Options, Advanced, Port

You can type in the port you want to try.

Good luck,

Norm

Changing the port will not work.

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Morgens ess ich Cornflakes und abends ess ich Brot
Und wenn ich lang genug gelebt hab, dann sterb ich und bin tot

--Fischmob

I had the same problem, I believe the problem was with AOL. In network connections it says my dial up is disconnected and I'm connected by a LAN 1394 adaptor connection. When I switched my settings in limewire from modem to something else I got the greenlight. I guess I could have switched my network connection but it seemed more involved and I'm new to this. But I did try changing ports and that did not do a thing.