I posted this thread in the open discussion but decided I should also post it here as it could be useful for some people.

Maximizing upload/download Success LimeWire

Objective:

I'm starting this thread to address two common problems which seem to appear over and over again in the forums.

General description of the problem:

1. Problems downloading content
2. Low upload count


With the influx of users to peer to peer networking and specifically New LimeWire users many of which I assume are also new broadband users there are several issues that arise out of a general lack of knowledge in what is required to participate in this type of networking model with moderate success. There are a few things that become self evident if you've spent any time on the Gnutella network and these forums.

1. Posts to the forum that don't adequately describe the problem. (for example, I can't connect.) -

The status of these problems would have a higher probability of receiving useful feedback if users provided some basic information such as; machine, operating system, connection speed, location of connection I.E. School work or home.

For example: I'm new to Limewire- I just downloaded limewire and installed it on a Windows 98 Machine with a T1 connection to the network from school. I don't have a firewall installed on my computer and don't know if there is one here but I cannot seem to connect using limewire. My other application i'e web browsers and email work fine. Can anybody tell me what's wrong?


2. Posts to the forum for issues that have been addressed in the FAQs suggests that people are not reading them.

3. Posts to forum for issues that have been addressed in other threads this also suggests that people are not even reading the threads before they post.
4. Post to areas of the forum that are not necessarily dedicated to the issues being raised. Connection Problems in the Open Discussion Forum. MAC issues in the Open Forum.

5. Finally, posts to the forum that have nothing to do with file sharing.


Now, for the problems people are having with uploading / downloading, Consider the following suggestions:


To maximize your ability to download successfully do the following things:

1. Go to tools/options/searching/Quality (show all four star results)

This will effectively filter out all of the people who are behind firewalls or have other connection issues, this will greatly reduce your frustration in downloading.

I should note however, that this could significantly reduce the amount of content you see, as most of the content being shared on the network is being shared from hosts which are poorly configured for sharing and you would probably have problems downloading from them anyway.


2. Go to tools/options/searching/speed (show all speeds)

I make this suggestion because if you are already filtering by Quality, filtering by speed will further reduce your results. If there 20 people on modem connections that have the content you want why not download from them.

3. Go to tools/options/filters/hosts under the disallow all messages from specific hosts add the following IPs: 192.168.*.* AND 10.*.*.*

I make this suggestion to filter out all the host who have incorrectly forwarded their private IP address on the network. These IP addresses are NOT routable and you will NOT be able to connect and download content from these hosts so ignore results from these guys. if

4. Go to tools/options/filters/keywords Filter out search results containing !!!

Most likely viruses or porn files emulating your search queries.


Now on to problems with uploading. If you are experiencing problems with people up loading from your computer the suggestions I made in and maximizing your ability to download see 1 through 4 above.) your machine could be one of these hosts.

I'll start with some general suggestions:

1. Make sure that you are not sharing from a work or school location as peer to peer traffic tends to be administratively prohibited. although it may not be explicitly blocked they could be applying quality of service rules to your traffic.

2. If you are sharing from home - leave your machine on for at least 4 hours (you can't expect people to download from you if you jump on the network do some searches and then disconnect.)

3. Finally, if you are using NAT (meaning that the IP address of your machine is 10.x.x.x or 192.x.x.x ) now, might be able to connect, search and download from the network but no one will be able to upload from you. If you have taken the advise of others to force your IP using limewire then your half way there, as your port forwarding is working correctly. But, you need to FORCE THE IP OF YOUR ROUTER or FIREWALL to the network. To find out what your ip is from the machine that you use to get on Gnutella open a web browser to http://www.whatismyip.com
(write this IP down and force this IP in Limewire) If you need help testing this Just post a reply to this thread.

By implementing these suggestions you will have better luck downloading and uploading on Gnutella.

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

LeeWare:

You're AWESOME !!!!

Can we make this a stickie on all of the LimeWire Forums? And then make it so that no one can post until it's read?

I know this is a place to ask for help, and not everyone is aware of the best way to do that, but it has been extremely frustrating lately with so many new threads being started with the same problem.

What's more frustrating is when someone posts a solution yet people continue the thread saying: "I have the same problem". Completely ignoring the fact that someone answered the question.

Ahhhhhh...just wanted to vent a little...

Julie, Thanks for your support!

You're very welcome.

And, THANK YOU!!! for all of your discussions and knowledge in these forums.

Yes... Your detailed, helpful participation is much appreciated. Thanks LeeWare!

twst

?

Thanks for the advice it has helped a great deal
although i still cant download warcraft3 from anyone although there are 50+ in one section i still get requery sent waiting for results any suggestions
cheers for the help without ppl like u us us users would be dead in the water
trhx again fryer

I would like to test my IP address as mentioned above. I have uploaded quite a few files since I first logged into Gnutella last night, but they cannot be found in a search. I use a Mac at home with a broadband connection and limewire 2.7.13. I believe I have enabled the ip to be forced and followed all other suggestions for uploading and downloading. Still, I am concerned my files are not available to others.

Thank you,

Donna

In addition it will reduce the number of four-star results left over for people who are behind firewalls and who are depending on those four-star results (while non-firewalled users can easily download from 3-star results). Furthermore if a search for rare content returns you only 1-star results you will see no results at all, although there is a good chance you could be queued in the 1-star hosts upload-queue or that the 1-star host could tell you who else might have that file.

Not a good idea either. While firewalled users could never download from the hosts you block, a normal user could with a little luck. Apart from that you are effectively blocking ALL firewalled users who don't know how to force their IP address from Gnutella.

That's wrong. LimeWire will not try to connect to them directly. It will broadcast a PUSH request so those firewalled hosts will make a connection to you, offering the file you wanted.

And don't forget to filter "/" while you're at it, since this character causes 90% of all CouldNotMoveToLibrary errors.

That means you cannot share with 100% of the bandwidth, so what? Most of the time you will not be able to connect to Gnutella at all, - and if you can connect to Gnutella you can probably share, too.

See above.

Thanks--I'm glad the information was useful to you.

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

Check your library tab in limewire under the uploads column x/y
where x is a successful upload and y is an attempted upload. If you see values for x then everything is working okay. If you see values in y then that means that an attempt was made but may have been aborted for some reason usually at the remote users request.

As for you not finding the files you have uploaded. Please keep in mind that because someone uploaded files from you doesn't mean that they will share them. Also it is a high likelyhood that if they are sharing the files they are outside of your search horizon or, you are filtering the results coming from those hosts by applying the techniques discussed in my first post.


Please let us know how it goes.


Hope this helps.

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

Trap_Jaw says....

"In addition it will reduce the number of four-star results left over for people who are behind firewalls and who are depending on those four-star results (while non-firewalled users can easily download from 3-star results). Furthermore if a search for rare content returns you only 1-star results you will see no results at all, although there is a good chance you could be queued in the 1-star hosts upload-queue or that the 1-star host could tell you who else might have that file."


This is true and possible-however the subject of my post was "Maximizing Upload/Download Success." The intended audiance are those people who join the gnutella network and try for hours to download things unsuccessfully. This solution offers them immediate gratification.

So as I'm sure you have seen this has helped more people than you can image. I have received very few complaints about using these methods. So, I'm not sure I understand where your going with your comments.



quote:
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3. Go to tools/options/filters/hosts under the disallow all messages from specific hosts add the following IPs: 192.168.*.* AND 10.*.*.*
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Trap_Jaw says....

"Not a good idea either. While firewalled users could never download from the hosts you block, a normal user ((could with a little luck.)) Apart from that you are effectively blocking ALL firewalled users who don't know how to force their IP address from Gnutella."

Luck is one thing. The purpose of my post is to provide users with a since of satisfaction. Again, I've received very few complaints about the methodologies I've outline. I should add however any user experienced enough to use this service with any success doesn't need this information. However for people you just like to jump on the computer and actually accomplish download something this information is very valuable to them. Yes - I am suggesting that people block all of the people who don't now how to force IPs for use on Gnutella. (This is part of the problem - these users cause tremendous amounts of frustration for other users. I assume, and it appears correctly, that they will figure it out when sharing lots of files with lots of hits an no uploads that something is wrong.) This thread was started to help them solve this problem. So, in my personal opinion I think it is a good idea.




quote:
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I make this suggestion to filter out all the host who have incorrectly forwarded their private IP address on the network. These IP addresses are NOT routable and you will NOT be able to connect and download content from these hosts so ignore results from these guys.
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Trap_Jaw says....

"That's wrong. LimeWire will not try to connect to them directly. It will broadcast a PUSH request so those firewalled hosts will make a connection to you, offering the file you wanted."

I think we are confusing Firewalled and NATed host issues. When you force the right IP on the network the PUSH requests work correctly. If you don't, this is what happens.


#1 Ping/Query Messages travel from Host to Host looking for content until the ttl has expired
#2 Pong/Responses Recurse the Query path to find the the host that issued the query. If my machine is a NATed machine it will respond with the ip of my private net. (192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.*) I would not be able to DOWNLOAD or send a PUSH request to this IP address. As the mechanism for doing file tranfers don't take place within the Gnutella network but between the two hosts i.e. the one issuing the query and the one responding to the query.

Trap_Jaw says....

"And don't forget to filter "/" while you're at it, since this character causes 90% of all CouldNotMoveToLibrary errors."

This was a good call as it is a problem experienced by many users.



quote:
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[B]1. Make sure that you are not sharing from a work or school location as peer to peer traffic tends to be administratively prohibited. although it may not be explicitly blocked they could be applying quality of service rules to your traffic.
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Trap_Jaw says....

"That means you cannot share with 100% of the bandwidth, so what? Most of the time you will not be able to connect to Gnutella at all, - and if you can connect to Gnutella you can probably share, too."

The reason I mention this is because in the cases where QoS is applied to P2P traffic the polocies tend to be strick which means that almost no-bandwidth is allocated to P2P traffic. So for instance anyone downloading or uploading on these connection can expect serious problems with the files tranfers. Take for instance a QoS polocies that says allow 4Kbps to P2P traffic means:

MP3 Size * BitRate = SizeInBit / QoSBitRateAllows = SecondsToDownload / MinutesToDownload = Download Time.


So, to download or upload a 4MB MP3 file with this QoS policy would take 2.2 Hrs to download/upload (So What?)
Limewire would report this as 0.5KB.

I Personally don't think that people with faster connection like waiting that long for a single file.

Hope this helps to clarify my position.

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

A significant number of users has no direct connection to the internet, - and you are trying to help some users (with good connections who don't really need that help) while hurting others (who already have a lower QoS because they're firewalled). I don't even think you are effectively helping anyone, since you are telling people with good connections to ignore a good number of hosts they could actually download from.

That does not suprise me. Some users will see a better ratio of search results to working downloads. That's not because you helped them increase the number of working downloads but reduce the number of overall results (also ignoring results that might have worked without problems).

Forcing your IP address does not work in any case: You will need a router that supports port-forwarding and it has to be properly configured, too. Otherwise people will connect to your router (since you forced its IP address) and the router will simply discard those connection attempts because it doesn't know what to do with it. In some cases you will have to ask the admin of your network to set up port-forwarding for you, for example, - and that's not good if you are using Gnutella at a university or at school.
That's what PUSH was invented for. It works even when your IP is not forced.

You clearly didn't understand how PUSH works. - The PUSH message will recurse the path of the response and will reach the firewalled host through the peers that transmitted the queryhit to you. If you got a queryhit from a firewalled host and you are accepting incoming connections, you will be able to download from it. Forcing your IP address makes your NAT transparent, so you can accept incoming connections and you won't appear to be firewalled to anyone else on the network.

That's what swarming is for - and I have no problem with waiting 2.2 hours, - it's better than if those people weren't sharing at all. Besides, I don't think you have any numbers on how many networks are effectively applying those policies. - You might very well be telling a lot of people to stop sharing files although their connection is perfectly alright.

Personally I don't think being behind a firewall is such a big deal. In fact the program works find with most firewall implementations. Thus many of those people are able to participate without much issue. The people who have the most failure are the ones with firewall / NAT implementations that are configured correctly. There at least 4 different types of NAT implementations and anyone with a remote understanding of NAT knows that there are some problem with using NATed based hosts with certain Internet Applications.


It is also noted in my original post that by taking these measures one would see significantly less results. My intention being why do a search that returns a large amounts of results and only a few, will after much attempting will actually work. Come-on, You've been on the forum you know that this is a problem.

You just described a typical situation involving a standard firewall which is usually not a NAT based implementation.


You clearly didn't read my post before replying. (I think we are confusing Firewalled and NATed host issues. When you force the right IP on the network the PUSH requests work correctly.)

I think it's a safe bet to assume that high percentage of sudden problems uploading/downloading from a school or work location and I'll even go as far as saying from some ISPs is a problem. For example any one large school or University that decides to crack down on p2p use could affect upwards to 1,200 users with the implementation of a Qos Policy and this is assuming approximately 1% p2p use.

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