Hi all,

I've been using Limewire 3.8.10 for a few weeks now and I'm convinced that I'm missing something with the whole P2P file sharing concept. I am using a Windows98 OS on an AMDK6-III/400MHz machine with 128mb RAM on a network DSL/cable connection behind a Linksys router firewall with comcast as the ISP. Here are a few questions that I've received questionable answers on.

1. How do I force my IP through the firewall and is this truly necessary with the PUSH option being there? I have read that I need to:
The problem is that there is no box to enter an IP address even if I check the "Force IP" box. Checking the box only enables the "Port:" box to be editted.

2. The age-old question of download speeds... I read the first page of the sticky ("Maximizing upload/download Success LimeWire") at the top of this thread and decided it was useless as any sort of definitive answer. My download speeds are typically under 1KB/s where an 8GB file takes some 10 hours to download. Downloading the same size file directly from the internet would take 10 minutes on my machine. I'm getting bandwidth tests of 1200Kbps on downloads (150KBs). I simply don't see any reason why it should take so long.

3. What is "Waiting for Resources" exactly? If my search turned up the file then it's there and available, right? So what "resource" am I waiting for? If the leaf node or source node is too busy to handle the request then shouldn't it not have been made available in the search listing?

In general, it seems to me that the whole P2P filesharing concept is okay for very small files but in general there's almost no sense in sharing anything of significant size which would include most programs. Right now I use Limewire as a desperation tactic for files I can't find elsewhere. Pity.

I noticed the same thing for question number 1, and I'm not sure, but I think all you can actually do is click the "force IP" option, that's all, nothing more than that.

Welcome Epoch (nice clear posts)

First, update to the latest LW (4.0.4 today)

Re 1, Just click the force IP checkbox. The other box is only for alternate ports. Your Public IP is retrieved automatically from responses received from other connections. Yes, it's not entirely necessary as the push will attempt to work around the problem, but if you can eliminate the need for the push, your connections will be better.

2 Once you can accept incoming connections you have the maximum chance of getting the fastest download speeds. However, speeds are then dependent on the host(s) serving the file. If they are uploading to many clients, their speed is distributed amongst all, and if they have a slow connection, you can see why they will serve the file even slower. That is why finding a file with many sources is best: LW will automatically choose the fastest. Typically most home users don't have the bandwidth commercial sites on the Internet offer. Comparing the two just aint reliable. You're right about the info in the download thread--it's pretty dated and many of the suggestions no longer apply. With most prefs to left at default, I can regulary get 200-350 KB/s download speeds (my max is 5mbps) by downloading from multiple sources after a quite specific search and repeating the search after 15 mins or so.

3. Sources may be around but busy, or have gone offline. I'm not sure how long search results last after the host goes offline or since changes with a dynamic IP

4. Gnutella has a rep for music files, but I find lots of video. Just depends on what others choose to share.

Cheers

Something pleasantly odd happened as I tried to finish one of the slow downloads. After 2 days of downloading it had about 25% completed. Then I walked away for a few hours and came back to find the file had finished!

Guess a watched pot doesn't boil! Eh?

Not sure if this was related to a reset on my router's port forwarding but downloads since then have been equally slow as originally posted.