Just wanted to give you guys some encouragement. I think you have a realy great program going. I know you'd rather get money that complements, but I'm short on money and compliments are free.

I just compiled the latest release canidate and it's running great. I've quit downloading for awhile and was just playing with how far I could spread my connections.

I'm up to 7U 4N and 25L right now, and it's not really straining at all. I have the compressed connections preference checked though. Does anyone consider this evil? I just see it as being able to serve more people if I only limit to compressed connections, because then I have bandwidth to spread about.

I may try stretching that some more to just leave it on overnight. I'm only at 10k upload total right now. My shared files don't get out as fast as they would, but I don't have that many important shares anyway.


Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for a great app.

Later,

Isamoor

I thought people here would know this better than I. What is a good ratio of connections to run? Or a good combo anyway?

2U:1N:10L is roughly what I am running right now.

What would be the healthiest for the gnutella network?

Thanks,

Isamoor

It sure would help if some knowledgeable people would reply to this. Our current situation where noone can find an active source when there are over 300 sources for a file really sucks. And it's because people are greedy of bandwidth, and don't consider how they are affecting the overall network.

We really need each development team for each client program to voice some strong guidelines on the ratios needed to resolve this situation. I do not know the design parameters for the Gnet well enough to give an opinion that might not do harm.

But it's very clear that if you do not offer as many slots for upload as you use for download, the end result will be terrible congestion of the network, in that you will be waiting and waiting to download files. The slots have to come from somewhere, so if you limit your uploads to 2, but commonly download 5 files at a time, we all end up in trouble. Throttle back the bandwidth if you must, but be generous with the upload slots, so that people can get the files they need. Even with slow sources, enough slow sources add up to a very fast aggregate download.

I'm amazed that almost every freely downloadable client has no documentation, doesn't give any guidelines, often doesn't even include installation instructions. This is the responsibility of the developers - to provide enough information to their users, so that they can be good net 'citizens', and do their part to insure that you can find AND download the files you want. They haven't done a very good job of this.

I understand that they are busy just getting the programs working, and I am very appreciative of their efforts, but the job isn't done until the paperwork is done. Don't forget that the users do not have the information that you do about the actual behavior of the Gnet, and have no clue what the settings should be. They accept the defaults, and assume that's fine. But for many users, it's not fine. They load up 25 files for download, and then leave the default upload slots at some low number, and have no idea what that does to the net. Unless you tell them, how will they learn?

Are any developers listening? Are they going to do anything about the abysmal situation we have now? Only time will tell....

developers/geeks are doing this because they are intrigued with the complexity and the challenge of interfacing with this network (RAM loved that stuff) but as always its better to focus on what you are good at, so documentation or other parts of the program lacks.
why not write some of your own and contribute it?
you can always e-mail the "geek" with specific questions and then add that to the docs.
geeks would like to see better docs, so they dont mind the questions (if they are short) and know you are asking because you are helping
just my 2 cents
another thing is to try some of the other linux clients to see if maybe its your fault, like firewall problems (way less downloads if you dont open the port) or maybe you can do some packet monitoring and see what works on one client but not on another so you can report a bug

Yes, however there are also leeching clients. As of version 0.93 gtk-gnutella supports a feature called Partial Filesharing. You might have read about it. In short: While you are downloading a file, someone else can allready download the allready downloaded part from you. Why this will help? Because people who don't share anything will still participate.
There is another problem though, there are more and more clients being firewalled. If you are firewalled yourself too, you will never be able to reach those other firewalled sources. The only solution for this (for now) is to make sure you are not firewalled yourself.

If something you want to know is not covered at the documentation at the gtk-gnutella webpage, feel free to send a mail to the gtk-gnutella-user mailing list.
Documentation has the same 'problem' as writing software, if we don't know there is a bug, we can't fix it.
Keep in mind we can't do everything. However, when time goes by, we implement more and more, same goes for the documentation.


All the default values should be fine. We do our best to make sure the default values are good for everyone. Most of the time there is no need to change these settings.
People who have a lot of upload bandwith will probably increase the number of upload slots anyway. No loss there.

Yes developers are listening. However, not all forums which exists can be monitored by the developer.
I read (and if necesary reply) the gtk-gnutella-user and the gtk-gnutella-devel lists. Always check the feature request list and the bugs list at the sourceforge page.
This is only to know what problems there are in gtk-gnutella. Then there are other mailing lists and forums which need to be read to know what is going on on the gnutella network itself.
I hope you understand I barely find the time to also monitor this forum.

As a newbie to linux and after countless attempts at trying to install and getting help for various other packages, I would like to also express my thanks to the developers for creating a great program.