Here is a Question for you all. I used to be a ultra peer but had to reboot my computer then when i sign on i am now a leaf and it wont reset me to ultrapeer. I would prefer to be ultrapeer as in myexperience<now with the new algorithm this may be different> but with an ultrapeer connection you do get more search hits and generally more successful and speedy transfers. why is it that my system is no longer being chosen as an ultrapeer?? what is different now than a few days ago??

Ultrapeers are chosen primarily for their connecetion speed, CPU speed and time spent online in the network. If you were deemed an UP at first, but then logged off quickly, then your time spent online would be low, and you would become a leaf.

as far as i can tell, stories about better search results and particularly faster download speeds as an ultrapeer are a myth that comes from the assumption that 'if youre connected to more hosts, you have more places to download from/search from'. this is not the case, as your queries are being forwarded beyond the hosts you're immediately connected to.

also, as an ultrapeer portions of your bandwidth are being used for communication with all these extra hosts youre connected to, like, forwarding their queries from one to another etc, all bandwidth that you could use for uploads/downloads if your were running as a leaf.

bottom line:

-there are plenty of ultrapeers out there
-it wont improve your sharing experience

so there's no need to worry about being an ultrapeer or not.

Just thought i would ask. Funny thing is I had to reboot my computer the other day <power went out> and when i logged back on to limewire poof ultrapeer.

yeah, it's sometimes unpredictable. i don't know what factors are weighed in.

it seems mine usually starts as up and then if it doesn't find many good connections, falls back to leaf.

It's the other way round, if LimeWire finds any good ultrapeers when starting up, - it will always become a leaf.

hmm interesting. it seems that i usually have to force leaf if i want to run as leaf. does that mean there's a lot of UPs around, but theyre all not so great?

Well, at least it means that most ultrapeers are almost full, - which is a good thing.