I have an ADSL connection. The A stands for asynchronous and that means in my case 64 kbit upload and 512 kbit dowload (theoretical maximum). However if I use the full 64 kbit upload, all my downloads slow because the tcp packets of my downloads can't send their acks because there's no more bandwidth available (the tcp protocol requires an ack for each packet)
That is not a limewire problem but it just serves to illustrate why I need to throttle my upload speed. I need a few kbit upload bandwidth to enable the sending of acks for my downloads.

When I select DSL/Cable as a speed in my limewire settings, however, I can't throttle any further than 10KB/s which is more than I can actually upload with my connection. Obviously the assumption is that my upload speed is the same as my download speed which apparently is assumed to be 512 kbit. Consequently I have to select modem speed in order to be able to throttle my uploads to an acceptable level (50% = 4 KB/s seems to beunintrusive enough and allows me to download at full speed). However this also has the annoying sideeffect of limiting the amount of connections I can make to the network.

What is wrong here is that limewire makes assumptions about DSL/Cable upload and download speeds which in many cases are plainly wrong. It is very rare that upload actually is the same as download speed. With ADSL it is different by definition and also cable providers typically offer less upload than download speed. In addition the assumption of a maximum of 512 kbit is also incorrect since there are variants of both DSL and cable ranging from 64 kbit to several mbit.

I understand Limewire's intention to simplify these settings. However, it should be possible to deviate and override the defaults. Preferably I would just type the numbers in. Now I either have to accept poor gnutella performance because I don't have enough connections to it or severely affected download speeds because gnutella gives away all available upload speed. I could of course be a freeloader but I'd happily share my stuff if it doesn't get in my way.

It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you can't upload enough, you aren't allowed many connections, so you don't download too much...

There's a workaround, but - why would you want to do that? To use up your full downstream of 64k/sec while uploading with 4k/sec? 3 connections usually do just fine, if you give LimeWire some time (like five to ten minutes) to connect to the network properly. Then you will receive enough search results and you don't take up to many connection slots on the ultrapeers.

my connection can handle 6 connections just fine it's just that when somebody uses all available upload capacity my download speed totally collapses (due to the lack of bandwidth needed to send TCP acks). So, naturally I don't want to allow anyone to do that. However, with 512 kbit downstream there's plenty of bandwidth to handle incoming trafic and if you are a leaf there hardly isn't any upstream trafic.

Having more connections, means you get more results faster with gnutella, also with a TTL of 5 there's only so much nodes you can reach with a search so you need more connections to make sure you're search reaches all hosts in the network.

In any case, the assumption of 512 kbit upstream limewire makes is plainly wrong on most dsl/cable connections. In addition 512 kbit downstream is only one of the many options downstream. On my DSL connection there are providers offering speeds ranging from 256kbit to 2 mbit downstream, for instance.