I wonder what is wrong with the gNet. My client tries to connect to hosts but the connections are timed out over and over again. I've increased the connection timeout to 70 sec and still no connections.

Just to add some details. I am using gtk-gnutella 0.9 on Mandrake 8.2. The program was installed from a rmp-package and everything went well. I have let the program run several hours without a single successful connection. Is this normal? Should I let it run for days/weeks to find a host. I cannot understand all the hype about file-sharing if it is really this difficult.

[I have let the program run several hours without a single successful connection. Is this normal?]

No, this is surely not normal. I am usually fully connected within app. five minutes.

[Should I let it run for days/weeks to find a host.]

No, certainly not.
First thing you can do ist to manually enter one of the gnutella caches like... ahem... forgotten. Do a web search on gnutella cache, you will find plenty. You can also look at zeropaid.com, eg.
Second thing, and more common, would be a misconfigured firewall. Maybe we could help with more information, then.

Greetings...

It looks that I am behind a (college) firewall and would need a proxy to get through. However, all proxies I could find were asking money for the access so it looks a bit pointless to me.

Many thanks for yor help anyway.