Hi, all.
As a convert to Limewire after Bearshare stopped being able to join segments without pops and squeeks, I am a little alarmed by the slow speeds of downloads.
I have read the various streams on the subject and done all that my basic facility with the computer will allow.
One aspect which does not seem to have been covered is that I find a download speed will fluctuate between 1 - 3 KB/s and often drop to 0 KB/s. At 0 KBs I have seen that after about 15 - 75 seconds I will be notified as 'connecting' and then be in a queue! At the same time people uploading THE SAME FILE from me are getting it at between 2 - 6 KB/s meaning that they will reach the point my download is at before the download is complete.
I don't believe that the host computer will regularly switch off or disconnect for a minute or so at a time so what is happening? Is it usual for hosts to kill an upload? If there are several people looking for the same file on the same host, are they rotated or on a first come first served basis?
Certainly there does not appear to be anything but an orderly queue for uploads from me and the only time an upload dissappears seems to be when the seeking computer is disconnected.

There can be various reasons why speeds fluctuate. If you watch your own uplds you may notice that one gets most of the share for a period & then the next one will get more & so on. Some people have almost unlimited uplds & high bandwidth so it's shared between a very large no. of people.

I don't know if this will help but there's definitely some hints here that do work: To continue files downlding (click on link)

Thanks very much. Very helpful.