Hi again

Sorry to keep asking silly questions but this is all new to me. Until now, my averare download speed has been well below 10 kb/s — only occasionally has the meter jumped up to the dizzy heights of 15/7 kb/s. But, this afternoon, for a brief 30/40 seconds, I was downloading at 45/7 kb/s. I didn't realise this was a possible download speed. So, with my 512 account and my Aztech DSL305E, is there a way to induce higher download speeds on a more regular basis? As it is, downloading is less exciting than watching paint dry.

David

with a 512k cable modem i usually get between 5 and 45 kbps.

the best results always come from search results with lots of identical files; sort by number and pick the top one (for the bit rate you want, where applicable).

sorry if that's too obvious, but like i say, you should do better than 10 kbpa pretty often!

My experience does not match yours. I have found no correlation between the number of stars and hosts and my ability to download. I have had one star modems download steadily while three connected hosts stalled at 2% until they lost connection. On my searches, I rarely find more than about one hundred hits. I frequently fail to find any (and we are not talking about minor names — even global searches on generalised key words like "rock" only tend to hit around the 150 mark on a good day). Sequential searches made seconds apart with the same key words will often find completely different groups of hits but, rarely, in real numbers. I can take hours for a file to download (and this would be a typical 3/4mb file). The frustration is that I watch people consistently suck up my files at speeds I never achieve — when they actually connect, that is. Upload connection is as capricious as download. Take the last few hours as an example. I had 176 uploads. 49 were 100% complete but 72 failed at less than 5%. And while we are into statistics (which I keep, poor sad fellow that I am) my download success rate is less than 5%. Yes, that's right. Less than 5% of the files that I connect to end up as 100% downloads. Limewire is a system requiring create patience.

Hello again David. Yep--patience required. Lucky you're retired!
btw, when you find someone who can download from you, click on it and use the control or command-click to "browse host" and see what that person can give you. It's a nice fair trade; not all hosts are browseable, though.