From Pasadena CA
Hello ! (sorry for my bad english... i'm a new resident in USA)

Since 2 weeks i use for try it the "Limewire 2.8.5jum87" like it's noticed in the "INFO DIALOG BOX" of OS X.
I use this application with Macintosch powermac G4 under OS X connected to an SBCyahooDSL connection 384Kbps speed.

Since 2 weeks... i crazily dowloaded almost 800 songs except one trouble since 2 or 3 days.

My problem & questions are: When i decide to clic on a mp3 file for downloading l lost the connection in 65 to 75 % of the time, Why ?.
Curious about that... i tryed to undesrtand this situation and watched in the STATISTICS dialog box of my LIMEWIRE and clicked on the download graphic ... as i observe the graph is very low 90 % of the time under 60 KBPS and sometimes for an hours or 3Hrs totaly dead.... and suddenly the curb ot the graph grown up to 160 Kbps or 200 but just for 10 to 20 minutes.... like a surfer on the beach, i wait sometimes an hour for a good wave and click like a maniac on every files i targeted, but no tanning by this way ...

-- WHY THIS SITUATION IS LIKE THAT ?

-- HOW CAN I OBTAIN A STABLE AND POWERFULL
CONNECTION FOR DOWNLOAD MORE EASILY ???

-- IF I BUY THE LAST VERSION OF LIMEWIRE, THE TROUBLE
WILL BE FIXED OR NOT ?

-- LIMEWIRE IS IT NON-COMPATIBLE WITH YAHOO SBC DSL AND WHAT I WILL DO IF IT'S NOT COMPATIBLE ?

If you are an expert or someone who allreadey faced this troubles, you will be very gentle to advice me and keep contact, will shares files perhaps one day etc etc etc.... thanks by advance.

have a nice day for you ! :-)

fredericurly@caramail.com

Hi there

Welcome to the world of Limewire. Your questions show that you misunderstand the nature of Gnutella. How well or quickly you can access other files is not dictated by compatibility with other applications or services. Think of the thousands of other users out there who have their computers switched on. In theory, you are going to grab some of their files. Whether you can actually find what you want and then get it depends on the quality of the connections through your "local" ultrapeers. Like me, for example. As I type this, I am linking a fluctuating total of some 4295M files (a total of about of about 4440 GB of material). And my machine does this imperfectly because the routing system between utrapeers is in constant flux to distribute the demands of the hundreds of queries and requests for downloads per second in an optimal fashion. If you are lucky, you will latch on to an utrapeer whose traffic is low and you will get efficient dowloads. If you are unlucky, you will get stuck in the traffic of an utrapeer who is struggling with the load.

So, what can you do? You can try to eliminate the consistently inefficient ultrapeers. This means keeping good records of your connections and weed out the ultrappers who seem always to be slow. This is not necessarily effective because every ultrapeer goes through phases. So, right now, my traffic has dropped to 103K files (360 GB available) so the leaf clients now attached to me will have speeded up. But, in some areas, there are not so many utrapeers and they may be more consistently busy. If you force a switch to other ultrapeers, this can produce some improvements but, at best, it's a hit-and-miss exercise.

You can improve results by being more aggressive in your approach to the peer system. Make multiple sequential searches for the same material and you can find different routes to the same product. Some routes will be quicker and more stable than others. Further, once you find a quick host, browse it and add one or two other downloads while the going is good.

You will devise other strategies through experience. Keep an open mind and be prepared to experiment. Remember that Limewire is what we all make it.

Good luck.

hello !

Thank you David for your reply... you understand me very well about my "ignorance" of gnutella network, just a friend who come at me place download the software and show me how it work in 5 minutes.
Yes, i feel by the experience of 2 weeks, i have to be more smart for hunt my the files of my pleasure; more smart and technicaly adviced, that's why i would like to ask you by reply of this mail.....

-- HOW CAN I DETECT EVERY TECHNICAL CARACTERISTIC OF
THE OTHER IP ADRESS WHEN I CLICK ON ??

-- POINT AFTER POINT, HOW CAN I SET UP MY PREFERENCES DIAL BOX FOR
BEING A SMART HUNTER ?

-- IN WHAT CASE AND FIELD THE PINK GRAPH OF THE DOWNSTREAM IN THE
STATISTIC DIAL BOX OF LIMEWIRE, COULD BE HELP ME like a nose ?? (i don't
what is it exactly, this graph ?... is it a visualisation of the real time avtivities
of the entire gnutella network. ?

-- IF YOU HAVE 3 OR 4 LITTLE TECHNICS OF EXPERT USER, COULD YOU EXPLAIN
TO ME "LIKE I AM A SILLY GUY" OR A DUMMIES..... GO THERE.... CLICK ON
THAT.....THIS BUTTON CLICK IS THAT !! ? ETC ETC.... ???

-- MY LAST QUESTION IS...If i buy the last versions of LIMEWIRE WHAT
ADVANTAGE WILL BE OBTAIN ??

I already copy/paste your answer on an OS X stickies and try to translate with altavista or understand by myself because my english is not perfect.

So Thank you very much indead for you time...

Bye David !

If you have managed to download 800 files in two weeks, you are well on your way to being an expert simply through experience. To answer your questions:

you are given information about the quality of the other hosts through the star rating system, the declared speed of the connections (although not everyone tells the truth about that), and the bit rate. In theory, a four star, T3 host with a high bit rate file will download very quickly. Sadly, it doesn't always work that way. So, trial and error with each attempted download. If you are getting a poor response within the first minute of connection, cut your losses and go to another host.

There is nothing in your preferences box that will help. You should always set your searches for the widest spread of hits and then keep trying on everything you see that is interesting.

None of the information available through the advanced section of the statistics section will help you in the day-to-day business of finding files. It is a profile of the Gnutella network as a whole and only of interest if you want to start understanding some of the technical aspects of the magic of peer-to-peer file exchange.

There is no technical advantage in buying the Pro version. This is a shareware system and the money goes to pay the expenses of the few good hearted people who are working on Limeware. Whether you decide to pay depends on your conscience in taking the benefit of Limeware without giving something back to the developers.

And finally — keep saying to yourself, I am not a dummy, I am a successful downloader and I will get better through practice. There is an unwritten code about offering detailed guides. Basically, you have to join the club through your own efforts.

Good luck.

Thank you David ...

For your advice , now i understand better, how to be more agressive for catch all files i want... yes affirmatively, i have just to find the good IP adress with a good Kbps.... kill every download who has been work and re-download and increase the number of simultaneous research... now i do not care about the statitics board. and everything work better.

And and ??

-- DO YOU KNOW HOW TARGETING A SPECIFIQUE IP ADRESS ???

-- DO YOU KNOW HOW READ THE MEANING OF THE CODE OF THE IP ADRESS ?

-- IS IT POSSIBLE TO TARGET OR DECTETED... THE COUTRY OF ORIGINS OF THE IP ADRESS... FOR MORE TARGETED THE CULTURAL FIELD OF FILES I LOOKINK FOR ???

-- WHY I LOST ALL MY RESEARCH MARKS AFTER I CLOSED LIMEWIRE... HOW COULD I KEEP THEM ??

-- WHY I CANNOT USE THE CHAT ON MY LIMEWIRE ?? (see my configuration in my precedent message)


i think... that's it !

Bye bye David

The Gnutella network came into being because when a commercial project to develop file sharing was being tested across the internet, it was copied by some enterprising people. They reverse-engineered the code to form what you now see. They had a choice as to the direction in which to release it. The original intention had been to allow file sharing and chat between designated machines — to make LANs and WANs into a more effective community. This was felt too narrow so the current open-ended daisy-chain version was released. This simply connects all machines switched on at any given time and allows connections to be established between them almost at random (through the chance of individual machines being available or not).

So the spirit of what you are asking was the designers' original intention: that you would link specific machines together through their addresses. And that is why browsing and chat works (or, in your case, does not but, frankly, chat is not particularly useful since little of value can be said to a random connection in a short space of time). Every machine on the net is allocated a unique address by the ISP (Internet Service Provider). This is broadcast everytime you connect. But Gnutella's present configuration does not support direct targetting. In a different context, you would be asking how to hack into particular machines, the only difference here being that everyone who shares files on Gnutella is actually inviting others to take that group of files.

The developers continuously discuss how Gnutella should be "improved" (it is all very democratic). Obviously, one possibility would be to allow stable connections to be created between specific machines for chat and file exchange purposes. Depending on how quickly agreement is reached, you are likely to see new features appearing in the Gnutella access packages like LW, for example to allow one site to create a magnet for other users to link for specific download purposes. LW is a "work-in-progress. It is evolving to meet the needs and expectations of its users but, because it is not a commercial venture, the actual directions taken may be more communal than specific. It will be interesting to see.

The search results you achieve are saved in a temporary file which is deleted at the end of each session. If your understanding of your own machine is good enough, you can copy this file before quitting LW but it will not help you because LW does not currently allow you to input those addresses for search purposes. However, if you do not specifically delete partial downloads from the download box, they are reinstated when you start your next LW session and LW will automatically attempt to reconnect to those original hosts. Sometimes, this does reinstate the connection if, by chance, the host is available. Similarly, refreshing the original searches can also reconnect you. When the hosts can be browsed, you can also browse from the download box. The choice is yours. If you keep large numbers of partial downloads in this way, you keep the chances of completing those downloads alive. But the greater the number of these chances, the more slowly your package will work. Personally, I delete everything that fails and simply (re)search for the particular files over time when I reconnect. Don't forget that, sometimes, only one or two hosts have what you want and once you have exceeded their download quota, you cannot go back for a few days. Keeping lists of what you want is a good idea.

If you are trying to identify particular cultural types of file for downloading, work on your search strategies. There may be language problems if what you want may be stored using different alphabets. Try changing your keyboard configuration to the relevant languages for search purposes and see if that helps.

And keep trying. It is only by experimenting that you will learn.

Thanks again for all David... i will experiment more in the next weeks... but this week end i downloaded almost 300 files sometimes very well with a stable links but with 1 or 2 Kbps for entire album.... and also i downloaded a single song in 30 seconds with 75 Kbps ...
Now my i-tunes is full of good thing... and it's a very very good pleasure.

and what about Virus... sometimes i accepted somes "corrupted files", but actually everything work well... i have no Virex for the moment...
A mac resailer in US said me.... powerfull virus for MAC OSX is very rare... and also mac update me often with some "security files", what do you think about that.
But i don't want disturb you with my questions,,, take your time for answer.

Bye bye... David


(My english is not very raffinate actualy... and i try to translate your message with babelfish translator, that's why it's better if you use a basic but academic english... babelfish understood better a i think)

Well, your success rate of 300 files in a weekend easily beats my best so I should obviously be asking you for advice.

I'm sorry my English is a bit difficult. I hope your translator converts me into something you can understand.

As to a virus, the only potential trouble will come from downloading short files you may see marked (Awesome!!!) and similar. Set your filters to avoid these files. More generally, the good thing about Macs (particuarly in Classic mode) is that they are untouched by almost every virus out there. So do not spend any money on additional security packages. They do not improve your security at all.

And that would seem to answer all your questions for the time being. For additional information, read around these forum pages. There is a lot of very useful information hidden away in them.

Good luck with your collection of files

David