I'm a newbie, so please be patient...
I have attempted several times to share new files. I have followed instructions in he FAQs, but the files I share show as empty and the counter does not change. I also sho many hits on my system, but no one has uploaded. I am on my computer many hours a day, so something might be wrong. I am thinking my computer needs me to allow file sharing, but this makes me a little nervous about general security. Does anyone have advice? --I am using Windows XP

Hello!

I to think that users should share files but I am against the vendor trying to prevent users from becoming a freeloader if they want to or simply because they are a beginner or do not know how Gnutella works.You would be surprised how many not very knowledgable users there are out there that have no idea that it is actually ordinary users like themself that are providing the content so therefore they have no ide that they should share to.But freeloaders do have some importance to the operation of the Gnutella network because they provide extra bandwidth to Gnutella that you and I can use and others that benefitt from them beeing there.

__________________
<img src="http://www.jordysworld.de/emoticons/blob16.gif">Sincerely Joakim Agren!

Hello!

I think that the built in firewall of Windows XP might preventing people from downloading from you.Read more about how you fix it here:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article04-109

__________________
<img src="http://www.jordysworld.de/emoticons/blob16.gif">Sincerely Joakim Agren!

Hello!

When a non firewalled node(servent) tries to download of a NAT firewalled host then the IP address that are showed are not the actuall address instead it is the address of a private subnetwork that are behind a router that performs NAT that are showed.And since the Router wont allow any files to leave that network to hosts on the outside that initiaded the traffic LW will send a push request to that node and the LW client that are on the private network behind the router will respond and itself will initiate a upload of the requested file to the non firewalled node that requested it.This works ofcourse because routers most of the time allow traffic that was initiated from the inside.If both hosts however is behind routers that performs NAT then this scheme does not works since both will just send push requests to eachother resulting in the Requery Sent message.

I would not recommend people that uses Gnutella to use a hardware router that performs NAT as a firewall simply because of this problem.

A solution to this problem could be som kind of inbetween Proxy servers that a vendor could set up to assist firewalled users to communicate with eachothers.But that could lead to some legal problems so I do not think that we will see a solution to this problem.

__________________
<img src="http://www.jordysworld.de/emoticons/blob16.gif">Sincerely Joakim Agren!

Thanks for the reply and information. I'll watch for news of proxy servers that will not be legally liable for the data passing through them.