Need for speed
 

Here is an interesting thing I noted. When I start up LW (4.10.9 Pro) in the mornings, downloading is usually pretty slow, often even connected to 8-10 hosts I only get download speeds in the low 10s. Now if after a few minutes I power down my modem for a minute - while still letting LW run - and then power it back up, downloading will go up to super speeds. Soon as it reconnects to 8-10 hosts again, my downloading gets up to speeds of 50 to over 100 kbps!

Not sure what the cause of this but it works like magic. Try it on your machine too and see if it helps.

PS: also those of you who have two hard drives, set your incomplete and download folders to your second drive, this will also give you a major overall performance increase - especially if you run other apps at the same time - because your primary drive does not have to wrestle with saving and reading at the same time. I got a major performance increase with that too.

Happy sharing!

My system: G4 dual 533, 1 Gig Ram, OS X 10.3.9, DSL 1.2 Mb

Okay, I know how to move my "saving folder', but the incomplete folder is created by LW itself and I haven' t come across any hint in the option panel that would allow me to move that as well................so, since you've done it, cloud you let me know, please, how to move the incomplete folder?

Thanks in advance:cool:

Hi FooloftheHill,

Find your original 'incomplete' folder (most likely in Apps->LimeWire) and move it to the same location you moved your download folder to. Then go to preferences and make sure your path for 'saving' and 'sharing' are set to the new location, LW will pick up your incomplete folder from here as well. Restart LW.

Here is something you need to make sure though: before you move your incompete folder, check that you don't have anything in it but your downloads.bak and downloads.dat file. The reason for this is because when you move the folder you will lose any incomplete downloads, they will not resume even if you force them to from your Library, you will have to start them all over. I learned this the hard way :(. So make sure you finish all your downloads before you move this folder.

It worked for me. Good luck!

Thanks pal......especially for the "you will lose any incomplete downloads"......I went through this once, almost 5GB lost.........I'll try as soon my downloads have finished.:D

No problem. Yeah, I know the feeling of losing all those downloads, I too lost about 2GBs when I moved my incomplete folder.

Hey, are you from Thailand? I did Muay Thai for a few years before. Good system, it's hard work and a very good workout :). I was only an amature.

I'm in Thailand but not from Thailand;)

Blade Blade

There are allot of modems that will do that especially if you do allot of downloading. You don't have to wait until LimeWire is running though you can unplug your modem for 15 sec then plug it back in. When you start LimeWire it will have good speed. This also works with allot of routers especially Linksys routers.

Thanks Grandpa, that's good to know. Although I only noticed the slow downs in LW not with browsing. I also used a speed testing website and before I launch LW my speed is at the max, even after brwosing the net for a while, more yet using downloading programs such as Speed Download. My bandwidth stays at the top. However even after I quit LW my speed stays very low as if LW ties up most of the connection an it doesn't releases it even when I quit it. However, if I unplug my modem and then back again my bandwidth is back to the max again.

Figure this out?? I tested it a few times, I get the same results every time. :confused:

Oh by the way I do have a Linksys router too, I'll try to play with that too.

I also have a Linksys and If I do heavy DL at around 350Kb/s to 750KB/s for several hours it will create a bottle neck in my router and my DL speed will drop to below 200Kb/s if I reboot my Linksys it will clear it up. I have found over time that if you properly configure Your Linksys for either UPnP or Port Forward the frequency that you have to reboot it decreases.

Hi Grandpa

I've been following your exchange here with Blade Blade and I'm wondering if you might have a minute (or two) to take a look at a post of mine several days ago where I tried to find some more ideas in increasing the d/l speed. You'll see in the post that I did quite some tests before posting.
Here is the link: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...=27036&page=14

Well, I reset my modem just before I went to sleep and let my computer on all night. Downloads were in the 20s up to 80 with some files before I left them. In the morning some of the files were still running and connected to even 9 hosts but they were down to the low to mid 10s again. Yes looks like somehow it does build up a bottle neck in the long run.

So I reset the modem again this morning and the same files are back to mid 30s to mid 50s.

I have yet to play with my Linksys too, I just wish the LimeWire developers would look into this. I don't recall this happening in the past with even lower versions. I am tempted to try going even lower versions like in the 4.6 range.

It's not a LimeWire problem it is a firmware problem in the Modem's/Routers LimeWire's efficiency over taxes their capabilities. You can limit your DL bandwidth until you find what they can handle.

Anyone knows other share programs besides LimeWire? I'd like to try others as well. I know there are others for the Windows system, are there any other available for the Macintosh platform?

The Link below should be of some help.


http://www.slyck.com/index.php

another issue identified
 

Thanks grandpa, I will check that out too.

For now I have identified another issue that kills download speed in LW. Have you guys noticed that when you first start up LW it connects with a high speed for a couple of minutes then your speed goes down the toilet?

This is what happens: I have a little utility tool called iPulse (http://www.iconfactory.com/ip_home.asp) that monitors my system. This shows that about a minute or two after I star LW it starts reading the hard drive with 7-8 MB/s, this instantly kills download speed that were running at full speed upon launching it, and it never really recovers from here, only goes back to 10-15 kb/s. This is the point where unplugging the modem helps.

However, I am not sure why LW reads the hard drive but this is the point where download speeds pretty much die and recovers to a very slow speed only.

This does not happen with any other program but with LW only, I can download with a browser or other downloading software but only LW causes this issue.

Try iPulse (or other utilites) and see how this happens on your machine.

That should not affect your speed LimeWire is merely checking file status and writing the file to your hard drive. The only way this could affect your speed is if you have a extremely slow or dieing hard drive which I doubt. I guess it may be possible that if you have allot of incomplete files that it may be plugging the pipes.

I do know that if I am running Azureus which you can set to have a unlimited # of connections. If I run unlimited it and I get up around 300 connections incoming and outgoing it will bring my speed to a crawl and kill the modem. Thus it is plugging the pipes and overloading the modem. And it does not appear to have anything to do with bandwidth usage. It appears to be # of connections.

I have my max downloads set to 8 as the maximum and around 10-12 in waiting status. I am also pretty good at keeping my incomples to less than 40-45. Still, when I start up LW and have some unfinished dowloads they start at full speed, some even faster than 100 kb/s (if I only run 1 or 2 downloads, my max DSL speed is 120). So when I start up LW it starts to download with full bandwidht, my network monitor also indicates a full bandwidht use.

Then about a minute or two iPulse shows the hard drive being read at 7-8MB/s and this time all my downloads go down to 0 kb/s. The read continues for about a minute or two, then it stops suddently and my downloads start to pick up slowly again, but they stay at 10 to maybe 20 tops, even if I have just 2-3 going at the same time and I connect to 10 hosts. Before the read I get 30-40 kb/s from just 1 or 2 hosts.

Until this read happens everthing runs smooth and at full speed.

You have way too many incomplete. When limeWire starts it starts searching for sources for your incomplete files. As you stated some will start at fast speeds. When these get going they are using up all of your bandwidth and LimeWire is still looking for sources and probably finding some but you are overtaxing your modem and it cant handle it.

Try reducing your incomplete and only down load 1 or 2 files at a time. On most files I see at leas 150KB/s sustained until the file finishes. LimeWire is very efficient and will overload your connection very quickly if you try to do to much.

After all it is better to DL 1 or 2 really fast than 7 really slow.