At least a month back I stopped running Gnutella (bearshare mostly) on my internet server.

A couple of weeks ago I installed ZoneAlarm, a free software firewall, that detects access attempts to the computer. I have used ZoneAlarm on many other computers and the norm is that a couple of times every day, some unauthorized connection attempts are discovered.

To my dismay I discovered that this computer, that I ran Gnutella on a month ago, is STILL receiving unsuccessful access attempts to Gnutella SEVERAL TIMES EVERY MINUTE CONTINUOSLY! (On TCP port 6346)

I have a permanent connection to the internet and a permanent IP-address. I assume that the reason for the above behaviour is that my IP-address is still cached on a number of Gnutella clients.

My question is this:
Is there any way to propagate an "unregister" message to the Gnutella network, so that the clients realize that my server will never again run Gnutella?

My opinion is this:
For all the hype about P2P, I am very disappointed in the behaviour of Gnutella. All protocols should have a proper procedure for (permanently) ending communications.

Klas Mellbourn

But it might be a very good idea for gnutella developers, to stop hammering a IP when the peer is down for longer time.

Meanwhile block all incoming to your old gnutella ports (6346) without logging them... so you get rid of bad clients.

Hej då, Moak

I'd like to add that you'd probably be seeing those connection attempts even if you'd never run Guntella. If your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP address (and most do) it's more likely that whoever had the IP before you was running a peer.

had the same problem running Limewire for a bit on Linux...

had to then reinstall win9x as needed to use specific programs
ZA just had a fit (like 500 hits an hour for the first week or so)

Reinstalled Gnotella, shared no files, and connected up for an hour...might not work perfectly but worked in this instance

I take it all the file requests failed, so the servents removed me from download list... but it is something that needs to be looked at.