poor download speed
 

Hello. Is d/l speeds of between 5 and 15 kb/s normal? I'm using a cable modem and dowlloading from T3, T1, and cable. Isn't that extremely slow? I d/l ed a dozen files of all different sizes and the speed seems to stay within those parameters no matter what kind of server I'm downloading from. Also, I'm sharing 30 files but noticed that there have been no uploads from me. I've been connected for about 5 days. I have a firewall installed (Zonealarm) and am using Limewire 2.3.3.

There are a few factors which could affect the speed of a download.

One is how many other uploads that host is currently serving on at the time you're downloading. The T3 host you're downloading from may have another 20 or 30 hosts it is uploading files to.

Another is the amount of throughput the host has dedicated to uploading files to other hosts. They could be on a T1 or T3, but have turned down their upload throughput to the lowest setting. Combine that with the possibility of a bunch of other uploads occurring at the same time on that same host, and that could lead to some rather slow download speeds.

Then there is the quality of the connection between you and the host you're downloading from. It could be an over-congested router or something at some ISP down the line that could be causing a degrade in transmission speed.

Then there's the possibility that the host you're downloading from really isn't on a T1 or T3 and they've just set it that way in LimeWire in order to increase the number of host connections they can maintain at once. (And as you may know, more connections means more hosts to search for the files they want.)

So, it's quite normal to encounter this.

[EDIT: Just forgot to add... As for your lack of uploads, you might want to make sure that ZoneAlarm allows LimeWire to act as a server. Otherwise, ZA won't allow LimeWire to accept any incoming connections.]

Thanks for that info. So it sounds like 5kb/s is normal. I'm downloadind a 57 meg file right now. It's been going for over an hour and is only 50% done. Sure am glad I dumped my dial up! Btw, I just checked my uploads again and now I have 35! So I guess it was just a matter of time. Looks like everything is OK. Thanks!

Well, actually, I should qualify what I said a bit with this.

5KB/s isn't out of the ordinary... however, every so often you will find a host that gives you the speed you might be more expecting... like 50KB/s and up. Personally, I have been fortunate to find a couple hosts where my downloads have gone at 100+KB/s, but they were few and far between.

Is there a way to look for hosts with higher speeds? I thought you were stuck with whatever you got.

About the only thing you could do is look for T1 or T3 hosts with 4 star ratings and their speed rating displayed in green (which apparently means that the transfer speed that is displayed in their search result has been verified as being relatively accurate). But even that won't guarantee that you'll get higher speeds... mostly for the reasons I stated in my first reply.

However, what I like to do is start downloading a file from one source and then perform subsequent searches every few minutes for the same file. If LimeWire finds another host with a free upload slot, it then starts in with multi-host downloading. Even if the second source is downloading at only 5KB/s also, it still beats downloading from a single source at 5KB/s. Sometimes I'll get lucky and find a second source that I can download at 40 or 50KB/s. Most of the files I download are quite large (anywhere from 50MB to 750MB... averaging around 150MB) so every little bit counts.

when you download with the same file with multi hosting, I take it that you are downloadind different parts of the same file from multiple locations? Much like a download accelerator? And they are joined when the download is complete? If so, how exactly do you accomplish this?

I have been having the same problem. However, mine is that it goes from 5kbs to 0 to 10 to 0 to 7 to 0 and so on. It finally winds up just hanging around 0 awhile. I dunno what the problem is but it is aggravating.

Yeah, same thing here. The speed fluctuates constantly. I think it's the nature of the beast. It DOES work however. I dowmloaded a 57meg file yesterday. It just tales a long time.

Yep, that's exactly it. Basically, since Gnutella servents use HTTP to complete file transfers, HTTP itself has a provision to request a range of bytes of a file from a host. The Gnutella client stores each part seperately until it's done downloading and then joins them together after all parts have downloaded successfully.