Slow downloading in comparison to Napster

Can anyone help me ?
I only have a modem connection, but when using Napster, or any Opennap clients or servers (Napigator etc), my average download speed was/is 3.5-4.5Kbps.
I can also obtain 3Kbps with Gnotella client, running thru Gnutella or Limewire routers/hosts.
But Gnotella was giving me BIG cpu slowdown prob's, so switched to Limewire Client,(which is V.good, well done Limewire guys),except for one problem, I cannot obtain a d/load rate of more than 1.8Kbps, and this is a peek, it averages @ around 0.8-1.0Kbps Why ?
Apart from this all is well, it just takes me 1hr+ to d/load a file that should only take 15-20mins on my connection & setup.

[milhouse_ph]

Actually I will admit that I have never had a connection that exceeded 5Kb/s... is limewire or any of the other clients capped in anyway (aside from the obvious throttle control in the options menu)? ... I mean 5Kb/s is fine and I can live with it but... it seems strange that 90% of my downloads are always coming in @ 4.9Kb/s and the rest are below that number... and this happens for everyone... T1's, T3's, Cable, DSL, etc...

LimeWire is the best it works for a wide selection of OSes and has better features/operations (d/ling, searching, etc).

The reason download speed is slow low is b/c your a modem. When you used Napster, the program send a napster server a list of your files. So people would connect to napster's server and perform a search. Sending the results back to the person (client) with a list of hosts with the files he searched for. Well with gnutella is based on a server/client (servent) program. You're a server and client at the same type. So while you're connected to 2000+ hosts and have a TTL of 10. That means from the host your connected too and 10 hops (hosts) after that a host can send you queries. You'll notice on your Connections tab showing the bandwidth (mostly look at the Input). Right now on mine I'm connected to 846 host with 3 incoming and 1 outgoing connection. Each input of bandwidth is ~.5 KB/s. I'm on a modem so my downloads are going to be slow. Most of the time when I'm connected to 2000+ hosts (50+ TB) when I start searching I drop connections b/c I cant handle the bandwidth (thats the way limewire is designed). Another reason why your downloads are so slow. Because people with sufficent bandwidth such as cable/dsl or higher connections like to set their upload speed to 0.0 KB/s which in my opinion just as bad as freeloading.

[milhouse_ph]

I'm on high speed... so it's not that my max d/l is 4.9KB/s I top out at 250KB/s....

Thanx Scud.

I now understand exactly how the system works, thanks again for answering my question. Dave.