What's up with upload preferencing?
 

Let's say I set my upload preferences to allow freeloaders rarely (slider is all the way to the left) only if they are sharing at least 100 files. I'm wondering why, once my upload slots are at max use, I browse the people uploading and they are only sharing like 10 worthless gay porn images (that's an example, it has happned many times to me) Some people who are using some version of Limewire, manage to get in even if they are not sharing any files (I assume that's how it is because the 'Browse' option is greyed out.) What's up with this? Does upload preferencing not work, or am I just not seeing all their files when I browse users?

Yes it does work. Why are you worried about this? Are you shareing something that you dont want everyone to have access to.

deepblue

No Deepblue this feature doesn't work. It worked last time 2 years ago I think, but now it is there to give an illusion of control to the user... (Plus there is no way to tell without error how many files a user is sharing... look at WinMX they have implemented something similar but users are complaining it isn't fair since the system makes several errors by cutting people from dling while they share lots of files.

apparently you are wrong...maybe you should speak only when you know what you are talking about. Half the people whose files I browse who are uploading from my computer are sharing pornography, and yes, much of it is gay. That's a little annoyance but should'nt be a problem with any straight person.

The reason why I am asking is because I have a LOT of good music...movies...anime...tons of crap and, though I'm perfectly okay sharing with everybody (even if they are freeloaders) it would be nice to block them because they don't help the network.

guess it's not a very good illusion, since I can clearly see that these people are not sharing at all. perhaps the option should have been left out altogether. at least leave it out until it's fixed.

other than this, I think Limewire is really good. I may not be able to get some video files that I would like, but music downloads are really great (in the pro version at least)

so keep up the exellence(to all the people that work around here)

definitely worth it!

Yes apparently I am wrong, this is because the last I knew was that this feature was working. Since it is much simpler to leave it in than take it out it will probably stay. And who knows, mabey the wonderful folks down at LW will try to start it up again. Actually most of those files are probably no gay. Those files, as with many others have false names so they appear more when you search. Than again, how does blocking them help the network? Mabey you should speak only when you know what you are talking about.

deepblue

true that.

uhh, yeah sorry i called you gay. i just get annoyed when people make silly assumptions that are untrue based on their own prejudice and/or ignorance.

Blocking freeloaders would allow more people who share access to my limited bandwidth, and if the upload preferencing option worked, a large number of sharing users could also block freeloaders, thus helping make this network the way it should be. That is, that caring people can download and freeloaders will have a hard time. Soooooo, yeah i know what i'm talking about. The question is, does it make sense to you?

Are you worried about you upstream bandwidth? Or are you looking to get your files out to the public. If so, throwing them in your shared folder is probably not the best way. If the upload pref. option worked how many files would that person have to share to not be an freeloader? If begenniners have too much trouble downloading they say 'screw this' and go to kazaa, which is bad for Gnet health. You made the 'silly assumption' that I was gay.

What we need is a credit system similar to eMule and partial filesharing... that would solve the freeloader problem!

Morgwen

No credit system, please. If somebody really wants to be a freeloader, let him.

I don't make the design decisions at LimeWire but I'm quite sure the LimeWire developers would agree with me there (for a change). Freeloaders are not a serious problem at the moment. People downloading lots of files are usually also sharing at least some of their downloaded files.
Partial filesharing doesn't work as well as I would like it to, but that's one of the points where I disagree with the LimeWire developers.

Thats is why other networks are more popular. Freeloaders are a serious problem, especially after many countries changed their laws - nobody wants to be cought... I believe that at least 50% are freeloaders (note at least), what do you think if these users would only share 2kb (of course high speed connections should share more) of bandwidth each, would this increase the network performance or not? I don´t need to be Einstein to see it does...

And I changed my minds within the years, at the beginning I thought let them download (who cares), but nowadays I say if somebody expect that a different person is risking to be sued for, the downloader should also risk something... if the risk is to high, go to the shop and buy the stuff!

And we shouldn´t forget freeloaders are people who share NOTHING, where is the problem to share at least legal files?

Morgwen

The percentage of freeloaders is something like 33% according to BearShare's statistics, so this is not a serious problem at the moment. You might want to try reducing that figure by adding some message to the GUJI telling users to share files but credit systems are not the way to go.

Not only are there more immediate solutions to increase the performance of Gnutella, - credit systems as a whole are not very effective in an open network. I don't want to go deeper into this topic because it is fairly late and I'm watching a movie, but I will say this much: The probability of meeting the same client twice within a short amount of time is very low in a large network. You would have to handle a huge database of information on who downloaded / uploaded how much. The number clients that would effectively ever be able to benefit from those credit systems would be very small.

The credit system would just produce an illusion of fairness, maybe have some users share more files because they think it allows faster downloads but you wouldn't even be able to measure the effects reliably.

33% not a serious problem? If you are a shop owner and only 67% of all people would pay would you call it a serious problem or would you increase the prices for ALL people? Up to 5% is no problem but more of course is...

Again my question where is the problem that these users are sharing legal files?

Its not necessary. A credit system based on the percentage of the upload speed you offer is enough. Of course this would only work with partial sharing, so the people would share at least the things which they download. See eMule!

Morgwen

Unlike edonkey, Gnutella has mainly small files. What you propose simply won't work. The probability of two servents downloading from each other simultaneously is minute (even for larger files, by the way). And without eMules awful, long queues this will not happen.

eMule queues are so long because most of the people share larger files - what do you think how long would the Gnutella queues be if the people would share mainly larger files?

Yes Gnutella is good for MP3s and nothing more... the Donkey net is very good for larger files and good enough for MP3s... a good all rounder. Perhaps Gnutella should be renamed to MP3 sharing net? This is one of the resasons why I only rarly use a Gnutella applications, it sucks for larger files and the freeloader problem.

I have to repeat where is the problem that freeloders share legal files? There is NO exuse...

Morgwen

sharers need to be encouraged--but someone can also share bandwidth by acting as an Ultrapeer (here I use half my alloted bandwidth of 1 gig per day just acting as an Ultrapeer).

[HAS the freeloader preferencing in LW's options been replaced by something more automatic in LW's code?]

They wouldn't be any longer than they are now because most gnutella clients limit the queue length to ~10.
The first-come-first-serve principle does not make file transfers more efficient so long queues are clearly not needed for a p2p network. (Rather the opposite is the case because long queues mean lots and lots of wasted bandwidth just for transmitting useless information like position in queue, next re-request time and so on.)

It may seem that way because most Gnutella users don't seem interested in large files - or rather Gnutella's selection of large files is small compared to edonkey's but gnutella can handle large files almost as well as bittorrent: The only problem with Gnutella is that most servents don't download the file chunks in random order yet, but that should change soon enough.

eDonkey is inefficient for almost any task. For downloading a single file it is very slow, the long queues and the source-exchange produce lots of unnecessary ovehead and it heavily depends on servers.
If you want to download a single unique file, from a single host, its long queues can be very frustrating unless this host has a very high uptime.

I think you can try to encourage users to share by showing them some "please share" messages. It is impossible, however, to force users to share in an open network, - or even create an efficient rating system that effectively disadvantages freeloaders (see eMule).

Ah that is the problem. You need MUCH luck to get a free slot and so its takes MUCH longer to download a larger file. With the Donkey my place is save... and with usually several hundreds of sources you won´t wait very long.

Yes because the people who want to download larger files use the donkey - why? Because of the problems I mentioned. gnutella will never be a good all rounder, to many cooks (developers). Did you remember the donkey started as one client, they made the protocol as they wanted... the users saw its good and used the donkey. But within Gnutella the developers have to discuss two years before they add needed features!

Bullshit!!! For larger files the Donkey is THE BEST WHAT EXIST, only with smaller files you "might" need longer to download than with Gnutella.

I never had this problem that I had to download a file from ONE HOST. The chance for anything like this is very low, you will have the chance to start the download from an other user who is downloding it at the moment (partial sharing). And it would me frustrate much more when I don´t get a free slot and I don´t know if I will get one even after several hours of uptime... the 10 queues limit is like a lottery, with the donkey I see "exatly" if its worth to wait or not. btw people who download and share larger files has usually a very high uptime or did you manage to download a 700Mb file in a few minutes? ;)

Its better than ignoring the problem...

I think we should disadvantage freeloaders in any possible way, the use our bandwidth without giving back anything - they are disadvantaging the people who share their files - they need longer because some people don´t share their files. All sharers pay the price for some selfish freeloaders

As I said there is NO exuse to be a freeloader even a 56k modem user can share at least 1Kb of his bandwidth...

Morgwen

That is an illusion. Queueing has no influence on the upstream of a host. You need more luck to get a free slot in a queue but the average time you have to wait for a free download slot remains the same. Sometimes the you may get lucky and get a slot almost immediately, some other times you won't. Since the queueing model doesn't have any influence on the average upstream it doesn't matter for the whole of the network, if you have queueing or not.

Only an hour or two, - which is much too long, IMO.

I would rather call that "normative Kraft des Faktischen" to use a German term. The crowd goes where the crowd goes. It's difficult and not really my goal to convince all those happy eDonkey users to use Gnutella. I could give you more examples where large numbers of users kept using technically inferior networks, just because that's what everyone uses. Fasttrack is just one example, WinMX is another.

Spare me your collection of inappropriat proverbs, please. Your ridiculous claim is totally unbased.

Well, they had to face other problems than eDonkey because Gnutella development was not driven by a single team with a single philosophy, so development was slower, had a slightly different focus and encompassed a lot more experiments. In addition, eDonkey still has an expensive client-server architecture that is kept alive by the community while Gnutella is one of the few networks that can survive completely without servers. Even ultrapeers can operate with less than 10KB/s bandwidth in both directions.

I did not ask you to abandon your religious beliefs but I still tell you, eDonkey is inefficient and produces far too much overhead. With my 128/768 DSL connection I can upload ~10KB/s of real content before my downstream is affected on eDonkey because I don't have enough outgoing bandwidth left to create an insane amount of 5-7 connections per second and keep those hundreds of unused connections open just to stay in some queues. Gnutella doesn't have that kind of overhead.

Lucky you! The chance of downloading a file from ONE host is actually quite high when downloading mp3s because people tend to mess with the mp3-tags, re-encode files, share their own tapes from live concerts which are usually very rare on any network. And I have used eMule regularly, so I know how it is to have a file with one or two sources hanging in your download queue for weeks. Btw, we have had partial-filesharing on Gnutella for a while. The only major vendor who is still working on partial filesharing is BearShare.

On Gnutella you would very likely not even know its there. Most busy hosts don't return search results because it's a waste of bandwidth and all it would achieve would be having them bombarded with download requests which can be quite expensive (a simple TCP connection costs easily 100-200 bytes, sending the request is easily another 100-200 bytes. If you get 5 of those a second like on ed2k, you are bound to see some negative effects concerning the amount of content you effectively upload).

There is no easy way of disadvantaging freeloaders, unless you want to create a market for a specialized freeloader servent.

Just now I am downloading a movie (700MB), from Gnutella. Found 6 sources for my search and I have been downloading it from 2 sources at 20KB/s for two hours now. If you can find a large file on Gnutella at all, you will usually be able to download it, - unless you see the 'RAZA' vendor ID next to the search result.

Who said this? What I mean is you have to wait longer to get a free slot - this is my experience with Gnutella.

Where was this crowd at the beginning (in German: "Was war zuerst da das Ei oder die Henne?"? They started like other networks and the networks who are able to attract the most users win... Kazaa is very popular but only good for MP3s, also WinMX.

No, its truth. Gnutella needs longer for new features this isn´t a claim this is truth. Fasttrack and other networks had multiple source downloads and queuing etc. while the developers of the GDF didn´t know how to write it. I read some discussions in the GDF where one developer suggest a thing and an other says its bullshit - some of the mayor features are a result of the pressure of the users who wanted them - see multiple source ddwnloads. I really don´t expect to agree with you in this point (as in the most ones)!

Since when? You need to log on a server first to get the IPs of your hosts...

Funny I have also DSL. I have usually several hundreds of active connections, I upload with 12Kb and have enough uploadspeed left to surf without problems! My average downstream is usually higher than with all Gnutella clients I tested. Do you have a technical proof for this claim? :)

I had the same problems with Gnutella, and not only with ONE host also with several ones - the best way to go here is to try an other file or change the network. No network is perfect but Gnutella has much to improve.

btw an example with very seldom files, which are not downloaded and shared by many people is stupid. You have to see the "normal" situation, not a special one. Which network can satisfy a user to 100%? I think this is a dream...

A point for Vinnie, I bet his users wanted it. And this is again an example of this Gnutella developemet, good features aren´t used because some developers think they aren´t needed - so it will take an other or two years before they wake up...

If and only if you will find a good movie on Gnutella its very hard to get a slot. But the advantage when you are one of the lucky people you have usually much faster downloads from ONE single host, but this doens´t matter because you will find with the donkey several hundreds of sources to donwload from - and I really can´t complain about my donwload speed. Its also a good idea to use donkey links, you can be sure this files are no fakes and are wide spread - more sources = faster donwloads!

No one said its easy but it should be done! Ignorance isn´t the way to go...

Morgwen

I don't if you remember how some important release groups left their IRC channels (shortly after the DALnet breakdown) in favor of eDonkey which was quite attractive at that time. As long as eDonkey is still alive that community will hardly move to another network.

There were long discussions on the GDF and devleoping the protocol took time (like all good things). There were a lot of arguments of developers with different philosophies. Sometimes all they were about was how to save another one or two bytes per query. The servent development was usually independent of the GDF discussions. If one vendor wanted to implement some feature by all means, it usually did and it did not wait months for the rest of the GDF to agree.
Sometimes the developers give features and issues other priorities as the users. I have learned to trust their judgement to some extent because they really do a lot of research before implementing a new feature.

You need some seed IPs if you run a servent for the first time, - this doesn't happen via a central server anymore, as you may or may not know. We have been using a distributed network of web addresses (usually simple perl or php scripts) instead that can run on any webserver, know about each other and have very high uptimes.
Most servents, however, don't need to request any new addresses from the GWebCache system after running for the first time unless you don't connect to Gnutella regularly (like once every two weeks or so).

Yes, I can easily proof it from my eMule statistics. When uploading at more than 10KB/s, my download rate starts dropping. I can still download at fairly decent speeds and surf without any problem uploading at 12KB/s, but my average download rate will 10%-20% lower (like 40KB/s instead of 45-50KB/s). The technical explanation is simple. Creating many outgoing connections is very expensive, so if you are uploading so much that the bandwidth needed for creating the max number of outgoing connections isn't available anymore, you cannot try as many sources anymore, - you will not get quite as many downloads slots and TCP connections start failing more frequently. This is a common phenomenon with asynchronous DSL connections.

Few small files are downloaded and shared by many nodes at once. The situation is a very common use-case.

If you can find it, you can usually download it. If it were busy it wouldn't even send a search result - except for Shareaza, Shareaza is usually so overloaded, you won't even get a proper BUSY-response.

More sources = more overhead. Ideally you would download a file from as few sources as possible and as many as necessary. Sending requests to many hundreds of busy sources is just not efficient. What you really want is to send a few requests and get a download slot almost immediately. All information about busy sources is basically a waste of bandwidth and that is where eDonkey's design is fundamentally flawed.

My statistic if different. I uploaded with 10Kb, 12Kb and 16Kb - my download speed was only lowered with 16Kb - no difference with 10Kb and 12Kb - as I said such a statistic is no proof. Show me a techincal documentation or an official statistik there several hundreds of nodes are tested!

If the few files are shared and downloaded by many nodes - you have more than ONE host, each downloader is after he gets the first chunks an uploader! So if you are talking about a download from ONE host - this isn´t a common use case, this is very seldom case and no good example!

Now tell me about which network you are dreaming which is perfect and can all what you are talking about? Its sure not Gnutella... it don´t exist. The donkey isn´t perfect either, but do you think the donkey developers are sleeping? Do you think only the GDF can develope?

I have to repeat the donkey is THE BEST WHAT EXIST for larger files... and you can talk about your overhead and be lucky with dreaming about the perfect network, while I download my files with eMule faster than I ever managed with Gnutella and this is no dream.

Morgwen

Tested what? eMule? You are most obviously out of your mind, you don't need a high number og nodes to test that. You can do it on your own within a few weeks time running eMule at different upload speeds. - As you know, there are no official eMule statisitics because eMule users/developers don't do much research at all. If someone comes up with something that seems like a good idea at the first glance, it is usually implemented no matter how dumb and useless it really is. @see long queues, queue rotation, credit system...

There is a large number of files that never gets that popular. Say I were sharing 7,000 audio files. Most of them weren't downloaded even once and I'm quite sure most of them are unique on Gnutella, because I converted like 5,000 of them to ogg myself.

I'm not dreaming of any network at all, - but Gnutella is certainly on the right track to create a very good network.

After MetaMachine more or less abandoned eDonkey? I think the protocol will remain the same. Sure they are implementing Kademlia but unless it replaces the servers it's just going to add more overhead.

No, there are also some smart people behind MetaMachine. Overnet appears to work really well, - too bad there is no properly working open-source client for it.

As I said earlier, I did not come here to challenge your qasi-religious beliefs. eMule has its merits, efficiency is just not one of them.

Morgwen [/B][/QUOTE]

About freeloaders
 

Your highness ..... :)

I totally agree with you. Freeloaders should either start sharing their stuff or get off the network. They are a burden on the rest of us who make their files and bandwidth available to others. This network is based on the concept of sharing . This means it's a two-way process, you give and take. Those that only want to take should go and find their stuff somewhere else.

Cheers,
Ra'ed

I don't like freeloaders either, but what should we do. LimeWire could force them to share by making it impossible to turn off partial-filesharing or don't allow the number of upload slots to be set to 0. However, I don't believe they'll do that.

There is no 100% solution, but at least there shouldn´t be options to turn of sharing!

Morgwen