hi, is there a tip where i can speed the downloading just alittle faster? like, is there a button where i can find other sources. or something that i should change in my option settings?

vintagedork,

Your download speed depends on several things. First your download capability and then that of your host. If you have a high speed connection but are downloading from a modem you will be limited to your hosts upload speed.

Assuming you have high speed capability you can improve your download speed if you can connect to multiple hosts. Often you can help the odds of this by searching on the filename you are downloading or refreshing your original search. Limewire sometimes locates additional hosts when you search again.

Norm

which speed do i choose i have bt broad band ..i got it set at modem at the moment

deeuk

You should go to - TOOLS, OPTIONS, SPEED and select Cable/DSL.

This will tell others what speed your system is running. It will not speed up your downloads. They are limited to the speed of the system(s) you are downloading from or your capability whichever is slowest..

You can limit the speed of the hosts in your search returns by going to TOOLS, OPTIONS, SPEED, and selecting to only return results from high speed hosts but I wouldn't recommend it. You will greatly limit your search results.

Norm

thanks very much

Speeds are set up according to your maximum effective download bandwidth:
- modem/ISDN : 56 to 128 kbit/s
- cable/DSL: 350 to 999 kbit/s
- T1: 1 Mbit/s to 2.9 Mbit/s
- T3: 3 Mbit/s or more
- Ethernet: not limited.

Then the upload speed is setup with a slider as a percentage of this value. The slowest setting is 25%, the fastest is 100%.
So the slowest settings for uploads is:
- modem/ISDN: 24 kbit/s
- cable/DSL: 87 kbit/s
- T1: 256 kbit/s
- T3: 750 kbit/s
- Ethernet: not limited

And the (default) fasted settings for uploads is:
- modem/ISDN : 56 kbit/s
- cable/DSL: 350 kbit/s
- T1: 1 Mbit/s Mbit/s
- T3: 3 Mbit/s
- Ethernet: not limited

On a ADSL (assymetric) connection, you may need to reduce the upload speed to keep your performance. The ideal upload speed to set is at about 85% of your maximum theorical upload speed.

For example with a 1024/128k ADSL access, you would choose:
- download speed: cable/DSL = 350 to 999 kbit/s
- upload speed: limit at 31% = 108.5 kbit/s (85% of 350)
(as the slider goes from 25% to 100%, the position for 31% is around 1/4 of the visible width of the slider)

Generally, for most cable accesses, you will need to reduce the max upload speed as well if your upload bandwidth is shared despite such access is most often symetric: you can't reach the theorical maximum. This depends on your ISP, but a typical cable access at 1.5 Mbit /s should work well with an upload speed limit around 1Mbit/s (so with the limit at 66%, or the slider will be near the middle of the slidebar).

For symetric and dedicated (bandwidth not shared) accesses (SDSL, T1, T3), you can keep this slider at its maximum)

To help visualize this limit, the slider displays the computed max upload speed.

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Thanks Philippe--that clarifies the speed options nicely. Through trial and error I'd found setting my upload limit to 80% of 1 mbps worked very well.

Recently some cable companies here in Canada have increased the bandwidth (usually shared) they provide to 5 mbps down and 1 mbps up, in order to stay ahead of the telcos providing DSL. This means over half of the top fastest domain names are Canadian.

So users with these companies should choose "T3 or Better" and limit uploads to ~95KB/sec. Correct?

However, the upload bandwith slider at its minimum is 93.75 KB/s which is a bit high, especially if others on the LAN start using their gnutella clients too.

So, would it be better to set the speed to T1 or T3?

I guess the best situation would be if LW could autodect the upstream load from the home router, and adjust accordingly.

thanks alot

That's what LimeWire will do. If you set the initial speed to high, LimeWire may start with poor performance, but will finally reach a stable setting, because it will monitor the actual total download/upload speed to avoid exceeding the workable maximum.

When any Internet application uses its maximum upstream/downstream bandwidth, it cannot react to changing conditions, because the roudntrip delay is increased a lot with buffering. A ping/pong that normally replies in about 70ms on a idle connection may be only able to reply in 800ms or more. Keeping a small unused bandwidth allows sending urgent messages and keeping the roundrip time at acceptable levels.

If you use 85% of your bandwidth, the roundtrip time will be increased but at a still reasonnable limit of about twice the delay on an idle Internet connection.

You may want to adjust the upload speed and check the TCP/IP average ping time so that it will be approximately the double of your average ping time when no upload is in progress. If your ping causes more than 50% of packet losses, you know that your upload speed is set to high, and the latency of your servent is too high.

Normally you will not need to limit your download speed (most users will want it to be maximized).

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The key setting should depend on the available upload speed. If your access offers 1Mb/s upstream, the best setting will be at 850kbit/s (103.75 KBytes/s) for a 85% usage rate, or 800kbit/s (97.66 KByte/s) for a 80% usage rate.

As the lowest setting for T3 is at 25% of 3Mbit/s (750kbit/s), the T3 download setting will work well provided that the upload setting slider not too far above its minimum.

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