Some questions and problems
 

Ok first off, Hello everyone; glad to be here. Any way, I have some basic questions and problems with my copy of lime wire. I am running lime wire pro 4.8.1 and I am using a dialup connection. I have noticed that when I first start limewire it connects and the connection indicator says “turbocharged” well as a little while goes by, it drops and eventually a box pops up that says something like-you do not seem to have an active internet connection bla bla bla…. The program still runs and I can download some files normaly but what causes this? I am running kerio personal firewall but I disable it while using limewire. I also have a dialup accelerator issued to me by my isp the company that owns the accelerator is SlipStream. Sometimes a another window pops up that says “your search will not return many results because limewire is connecting to the network” or something close to that and I end up closing limewire and opening it again because clicking on disconnect and then connect doesn’t help. I noticed that a lot of my downloads never download and say need more sources. That is not strange but what is, is the fact that this happens to downloads that when I choose to download them have like 10-20 sources; where do they go? It drives me insane to see that I can’t download a file that a million other people have. I noticed that you can choose to block people from getting your files if you don’t share enough in return. If you are being blocked because you don’t share enough to get someone’s files do you get any warning or does it just popup as need more sources? I am sharing about 555 files total is that considered a lot by most? Oh and what does waiting for stable connection mean? Thanks for the help in advance!

You are what's known as a Leaf, not an ultrapeer. So when you go to the Monitor window & click view searches in the top part of the window, it will say such a message because ultrapeers are those you connect thru & they handle most of the traffic. That saves bandwidth for you. (BTW the speed accelerator is only useful for browsing, it won't affect p2p sharing at all. It's an artificial accelerator.) The other message you see is because you should wait for LW to settle down before doing too much with it.

The other message you're seeing re: firewalls might be related to XP's firewall. Did you configure your firewall so it allows LW full access (advisable not to have 2 active firewalls b/c they can interfere with each other); Firewall configuration instructions (click on link) In any case, go to LW's menu bar, Tools>Options>Speed & tick Disable Ultrapeer Capabilities & press the apply button.

Waiting for stable connection means just that, it's waiting to initialise the connection with the host.

It sounds to me like you are doing too much too early & it's affecting LW's connection. If you're only using dial up then you can't afford to downld much at once. Your files will just go to need more sources or queued. Whilst you may find 25 people in your search results, many of these might have all their upload slots full, or you can't establish a reliable connection to them or they don't have any upld bandwidth left over. Net traffic probably plays some small part in there also. Your shared amount is good.

See the following link & follow “ALL” the off-shoot links to find hints & extra skills to help solve your problem: To continue files downlding (click on link)

I knew that the dialup accel. Would not affect the speed of LW I just put that there incase it meant anything to you. I forgot to mention that I use win 2000 pro I don’t like XP. I uninstalled my firewall because I was still having problems. I didn’t do anything after I started LW but after about 20 min. of downloading the active no internet connection thigy popped up and my downloads stopped! I am getting tired of this! I alow a max of 3 downloads at once which equals out to about 1 kbs per download. So what next? I am not acting as a ultrakeeper as you suggested so I don’t know what to do. So in other words- more help please!

Hi Mr. Samurai & Lord of the Rings

I have recently been doing some testing with Dial-Up connections. Thought this would be a good place to post the conclusions of the test I have run. From what I have seen allot of the problems people are having are the results of configuration LimeWire needs to be configured for dial-up.

#1 the first thing a person needs to do is a speed test and find out exactly what there connection speed is. Make sure when you do the test that if the results are in kbps that you dive the results by 8 to get Kb/s. Thus 50kbps/8 =6.2Kb/s which would be a good 56K connection. The link below will take you to a sped test for the US if you are not in the US do an Internet search for speed test.

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

I am going to explain the results of the test I did as I go. Thus explaining the reason for the recommended settings. If anybody gets different results than I did they will be able to post there result on this thread to correct any settings that might help on different setups.

Now that you have the sped test results you can begin configuring LimeWire I will use the above results for this thread.
I found while monitoring my connection with task manager that if you use too much of your capabilities you create an unstable connection and have frequent short term disconnects. Not a complete disconnect but enough for LimeWire to detect thus the disconnect warning. When this happens you will normally drop to 1 connection and if you are using all of your bandwidth for downloading LimeWire finds it almost impossible to reconnect to more Ultrapeers.

Also if you have your Download bandwidth set to high you are only hurting yourself do to the fact that when downloading LimeWire has to be able to communicate with the sources you are downloading from to let them know you have received X amount of the file and are ready for more. If you are using all of your capabilities to download then you have nothing for communication thus creating a bottle neck and fluctuating speeds 5Kb/s drooping to 0 or 1. If you see this you will need to lower your settings.

#2 Using the above example 6.2Kb/s X 75%=4.65Kb/s this would be a good starting point. I have found that LimeWire performs pretty well at this setting. So you will need to set your Download bandwidth to 4.65Kb/s or lower. Also set your connection as Dial-up if you choose cable or any other connection you are just hurting yourself.

#3 For best results download 1 file at a time do no searching and have no previous files looking for sources. You can drastically reduce the amount of corrupt files if you follow these instructions.

#4 Upload bandwidth remember that you do not want to max out your bandwidth you need to leave some for LimeWire to communicate with your download sources and while I do not like leaches dial up users really do not have allot of capabilities to share. I found that with the above download setting 0 to 1.75Kb/s is about max you can set it at.

#5 Do not cruse the Internet while you are downloading it take bandwidth resources to cruse the Internet if you want to be on the Internet and Download with LimeWire at the same time you will have to adjust your download bandwidth to accommodate for Internet use.

I know that allot of people have been concerned with the quality of the connection, the number of bars showing e.g. the number of sources you are connected to and the number of sources you are downloading from. I have found that with dial-up that the number of Ultrapeers you are connected to while downloading really doesn't matter. What does matter is the choice you make when choosing which file to download. I have found that if you choose 4 star with the most sources an cable or better connection if you get just one source to download from it will probably max out you capabilities unless you are unlucky and happen to connect to another dial-up user.

Using the above formula for settings I have download 100 mp3 files all completed most take about 20 minutes to complete using a 26.4K connection. 5 of these files got corrupted in the download process. Thus I have download bandwidth set a 2.56 and upload bandwidth at 0 the minimum is 1.75Kb/s and I have found that if I set it at the minimum I will get disconnects and bottle neck problems and corrupt files.

I did simultaneous searches with a cable connection and downloaded and check the files before downloading with the dial-up connection all files were good with no corrupt files. If I set the download or upload bandwidth too high I would start having problems with download speed and corrupt files.

There are other things that need to be configured such as firewalls and routers but these settings should help once you have a connection.

Just a little note Dial-Up connections a notorious for bad connections due to pore line conditions and traffic problems thus the recommendation for only 1 download at a time. There is a better chance of completing a file if you use this method.

Hey dudes, well I can't belive it but that actualy fixed my problem.... I would have guessed that the comunications between the computers would have been included in the percentage of bandwith alowed. I still have lots of files that won't d load but thats ok. Dialup sucks and is hard to manage (I know because I am a A+ certified computer tech) but is still used because it is reliable as long as it is maintained.