In rare instances I've seen it connect to more than 10 hosts. So any suggestion that the number of connections is capped should be disregarded. However, it appears that you are really interested in increasing the number of connection and I question your commitment to following-up on this issue. So let me give you a few pointers without doing the work for you.

#1 In the developers thread ask if there are any limits or caps

#2 goto http://www.limewire.org and download the source code take a look at it and make any changes you like.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Im not sure that you understand completly. Therefore dont be insulted if I draw you a picture. Most people who pay $18.88 for the pro version dont dont know how to look at the source code and apply it to theyre own benifit. Thats why they pay the $$ for the program! Think about it. It makes good sense.... I dont need to go to the developers page to ask if the ultrapeer limit is capped. I know for a fact that in one way or another it is. The older pro versions had at one point or another 8 concurrent ultrapeers going on at the same time. Thats a 60% drop from the next release limeware released, and still today its a 60% drop.

I dont write/read source code, nor am not a developer in this instance. Im a webmaster so it would do me no good to circumvent something I dont understand. Same is true for the the people who pay for the program: Why am I paying for a program that is capped as far as ultrapeers are concerned when there are more resources out there? Id much rather give up some of the features of limewire to be able to hit more sources/ultrapeers.

When looking at the compairison at both the basic and pro it intrests me that while I was using the basic version I could connect to more sources. WOW! pull out my credit card and purchase. The basic version consisted of 3 ultra peers. When I purchased the pro, I had a total of 5. so two additional ultrapeers. not what I expected...
Something else that I cought my eye was the speed issue. It stated that you will get "Turbo-Charged" speeds with the pro version. Most people know that the speed is only as good as downloaders download speed and the uploaders upload speed. It even says that in the FAQ's and I quote:

Limewire has contradicted themselves here.

I didnt ask for rare instances I asked for why you didnt answer the concerning question that all pro users face and more importantly want to know. If I or anyone else knew I wouldnt we wouldnt ask, or we wouldnt reftify the answer doing research of something we know nothing about. If you do not know, just say it. Ill still be your friend. If you do know, modify the source code make a exe out of it and share it here.

Regulator

Dear Mr. Evans:

Much of what you offered in your post is valuable, but I need to take exception with a couple of your points.

First of all, my Internet address is 192.168.0.100, which is an address you ask people to block (192.168.*, as you put it). Since I am acting as a Gnutella ultrapeer, this seems contrary to the best interests of the various users who may have read your post. I promise that I am not a host who has any ill wishes toward any Gnutella participants. I am working hard, and using my computer's fast connection, to facilitate the Gnutella experience.

It may be that you associated the 192.168 series of Internet numbers with *routers.* Yes, I am running behind a NAT router. I have two computers in my home, and need a router to distribute my Ethernet connection between the two home computers. One *must* have a router to distribute an Ethernet connection, and routers have this thing about using standard Internet addresses.

I had to study the technical details of LimeWire and the Gnutella network in order to configure my router so that it would allow me to become an ultrapeer (supernode). The router's internal, inherent firewall made it impossible for me to become an ultrapeer, but I *fixed* that!

Technical details: Windows XP, Dell Dimension 2400 (low-end) computer, Broadcom Ethernet card, cable Internet connection using standard 10/100 Ethernet, Dynex DSL/Ethernet Router model DX-E401. Standard twisted-pair straight-through Ethernet cables connecting everything. Motorola Surfboard cable modem, Ethernet compliant. ISP guarantees 3 megabit download speed, but I have seen it go much higher than that in brief spurts - exeeding 10 megabits. The guaranteed speed is faster than T1, but cannot go so high as T3.

Now in order to allow my computer to act as a Gnutella ultrapeer, I had to reconfigure my router, because the router's internal firewall, by default, was configured to disallow straight-through communication except on the most necessary ports. Configuring my computer and it's Internet connection to act as a LimeWire ultrapeer was a two-step process.

The first thing I had to do was reconfigure the Dynex router. The router can be forced to pass, to forward unchanged, communication on selected ports. The primary Gnutella port is 6346, so I told the router to accept LimeWire as an application that would require the router to force passage of packets on port 6346.

Then I opened LimeWire, and opened Tools->Options->Advanced->Firewall Config, and clicked on "Manual Port Forward," making sure that the port being forwarded was 6346.

Telling my router that it *must* forward all port-6346 messages to LimeWire unaltered, and telling LimeWire that it must listen on port 6346, well, it did the trick! Before I made this change, I was always a leaf under an ultrapeer. After making this change, I have become an ultrapeer.

The key was the router. The router's default settings disallowed the kind of straight-through packet forwarding that LimeWire (or any other Gnutella client) needs in order to provide free, uninhibited access to the network.

I hope this helps everyone. I can provide more technical details, if needed.

But please don't block addresses in the 192.168 range - that's a "solution" that will inhibit my ability to contribute.

Dear Regulator,

Let me answer your question as clearly as I can. I don't know if there is any built-in limitation in the number of ultrapeers you can connect to.

With that being said, I am glad that you will continue to be my friend this is very important to me. Here's a couple of suggestions about how you might do that.

1) If you have multiple nodes you can run limewire on all of them (chances are each one will connect to a different set of Ultrapeers in the network.)

2) If you are using a single client you could take two approaches. a) make a list of ultrapeers you are connected to --disconnect / reconnect your gnutella client from and to the network. -- You should connect to a new set of ultrapeers. -Make a list of these machines.

Finally, let your client run long enough --(hope you have a good connection and are non-firewalled for port 6346) Allow your node to become an Ultrapeer. You will connect to approximately 25-30 other peers (Ultrapeers) and you will aggregate leaf connections usually around 30. Then, if you want to add more peers use the list from earlier and add them under your connections tab.

Good luck.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Dear Donkeyboy,

As you can tell this has been a very active and long-running thread. You will also notice that is was started quite a while ago. Well, since then things have changed a lot and most of the original suggestions might not be appropriate for today's environment. This is mainly due to the improvements to LimeWire and gnutella in general.

Hope you understand.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

I have to say that was sound advice. In fact it got me grinning from ear to ear for a moment.

Case in point: Limewire pro does in fact have limitations, and I dont have to read, know or understand the source code to figure it out.
Reasoning: I usually connect to 5 ultra peers at any given point, and only 5 at a time. I could add another host as per your recomendation(s), however it drops that connection after about 4 seconds and continues with the origional 5 hosts. Now what I did was I removed one host and it automaticly added about 3 hosts and then after about 4 seconds, dropped 2, leaving me with... you guessed it, 5 hosts/one different from the others. And no firewall is one this port.

Do you even have limewire installed to accurately provide sugestions concerning this matter or even test your sugestions prior to posting? Im asking this because your attempts fall short of what is realy fact or fiction.

I adverage 5800 down and 716 up off on one node, the only node that is provided for me, unless of course i wanna run up the line next to my house and connect to another node, however I will decline to do so because out cable line is above the voltage line which is connected to a transformer that for some reason smokes when it rains or if its 30 degrees and below. I dont know why, its only 46 years old.

The question is why are pro users able to gain two to three additional hosts, but still in fact limited to other hosts? Especially when 13 hosts are found (In my area) when first launching Limewire, but drop down to 5 within 15 seconds... I guess I wouldnt make a big issue out of it if Mr. Limewire didnt offer a pro version. But now purchasing the pro version and only getting two extra hosts out of the whole thing is a waste of my time and more importantly, money. It should be addressed to every prospective buyer of the pro version that its simply not worth the $18.88. Have a great day and any communications can be forward to me at reg808@comcast.net.

Umm. Lee Ware. I have a question. I have just downloaded limewire pro and tried to download some music. After I imputted it, there was a pop up that said :Limewire is currently trying to connect to the network. Your search may not return many results until u are fully connected to the network. I am fully connected to the internet and i checked all my connections and they are fully inserted. What does that mean and what should i do and look out for. Everytime i tryed to download this message appears.

192.168.*.* AND 10.*.*.* when ever i ad this exactly into the filter hosts then hit add it doesn/t work it just beeps at me and nothing happens what wrong?

Typically, because pieces of the file you are downloading are corrupt and they must be re-downloaded.

Hope this helps.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com

Dear Regulator,


There are a few things you should be aware of.

1) I do have LimeWire installed and configured correctly as I've built my CDN (Content Distribution Network on top of it.) I've distributed 4,838,950 (4.8 million) files most of which have been distributed via LimeWire although I've tried other clients from time to time.

To be fair, I use LimeWire in a slightly different fashion than most users. That is most people use it to get stuff from the network. I use it to publish stuff on the network. Therefore, my interests is counter to the P2P culture at large.

2) Think of LeeWare Development as a small ISP. I run my own infrastructure resources -- All of my nodes are in bastion environment (not protected by any firewalls etc.) I avoid about 98% of security problems by properly configuring my systems. I've done some pretty interesting things with P2P clients that is figuring out how different configurations impact uploads and downloads. I have enough resources to test this from both ends.

Therefore, much of my advise come from experience not just stuff I make up just to sound important. It's simply not necessary for me to do that. I don't have any of the problems that people in this forum have. I do this because I like helping people if I can.

This brings me to my third point.

3) I don't get paid to support LimeWire. I do this out of simple kindness. Therefore, I am not obligated to invest any significant amount of time energy or resources to helping someone else solve a problem. That seems to be of a nature that would best be address by the developers of the product and not some guy in a forum.

4) There are other reasons to pay for the PRO edition of LimeWire beyond any of the marketing hype -- Such as supporting the developers for producing a great product. I've bought every version I've had of the product accept for the earliest ones.

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com