Since installing Windows Service Pack 2, my connection quality has dropped severly. Maybe just a coinencedence? I turned off the firewall in windows and run no other.

Anyone else having this trouble?Thanks in advance for any constructive imput.

ah.. Windows xp... M$ sucks. XP SP2 limits the concurrent connections to 10 on one port (on gnutella it is by default 6346) over a second. More connections attemps are blocked. SP2 sucks for P2P programs. There are four solutions:

1)download LW 4.1 beta @ http://www.limewire.com/english/content/beta.shtml which attemps less simultaneous connections.

2) search on the web for the patch that let more simultaneous connections (patch not from M$)
http://www.lvllord.de/4226fix/4226fix.htm isn't working now but this site contained the patch.

3) uninstall SP2

4) switch to Linux or Mac os x

I'm so happy to be a mac user!

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Thanks will work on those.. actually I am starting to get some good connections just have to wait liek a minute now

Yeah, XP SP2 is allowing only 10 simultaneous outgoing connection attempts (AFAIK it has nothing to do with the port) which is not quite enough for most p2p apps. - Installing the suggested patch helps though.

50 simultaneous connection attempts (!= 50 simultaneous connections, XP SP2 still supports up to 1024 simultaneous connections IIRC) is more than you will ever reach with LimeWire - well, - theoretically you could reach more but during normal operation you will seldom have more than 20 half-open TCP connections at a time

My bittorrent implementation does well below 3 simultaneous connection attempts per torrent.

Speaking of Number of simultaneous connections here.......

I run Win2000. What is the way I can see how many my system is allowing? And how can I set that number higher?

As an ultrapeer, I usually only get 30 peers and 30 leafs. But I have tons more bandwidth available for additional connections. (CPU takes a hit though to manage more connections it seems.)

You'll have to forgive me because I'm not particularly computer savy.

If I'm understanding you properly:

I can install the XP Service Pack 2 and it won't affect my Limewire as long as I install this patch.

Correct?

Do I also have to disable the XP Service Pack 2's built-in firewall?

@Bored...
You should at least configure your firewall to open port 6346 (or whatever port you are using for LimeWire) for incoming TCP and UDP traffic.

@Cougar
I don't think the number of leafs per ultrapeer will be increased. It's not so much the traffic that you couldn't handle, ultrapeers handling too many leafs cause problems with intra-ultrapeer query-routing: other ultrapeers will send you too many queries that do not match any of the files you or your leafs are sharing, increasing traffic for all ultrapeers connected to you.

I've added the ports to the built-in firewall, I found some instructions elsewhere on the site. I would have deleted my previous post but I'm not sure how to do it. ^.^