We actually did it this way on purpose. The maximum number of hosts you can swarm from for a single download is 6, and you can only do this if you have a very fast connection.

Also, from a UI perspective it would not really make sense to make the user count all of the individual downloads within swarms and sum them to see why we were queuing a new download request. This would be pretty confusing.

This is very good to hear.

This only means that if I am about to download a few files where I know there will be many hosts available to swarm from I have to adjust the limit accordingly.

Just to clarify, does the program make any decisions based on connection speed on adjusting the max swarming amount or is it harcoded at 6?

(I have 1Mb DSL downstream (384kb upstream) connection and 8 connections would allow apprx 12,5KB per connection in optimal situation and if, in the worst case scenario, I was swarming the maximum of 6 per dl available bandwidth per connection would be around 2,1KB - overhead which would throttle the total connection almost to zero with the overhead from each)

And as from the UI perspective, you could still make this available from the options if users desires so?

And of course, if this would be implemented, it would be sensible to check if more hosts have become available for the files you're already downloading before checking the queued files when more dl slots have become available.

Of course, I realise, this does not make much sense since the worst case is almost impossible to happen. (this just came to my mind since I'm currently working on a web-application where I have to think a lot about the used bandwidth/connections, even if it is more from a database point of view

it would be really bad if modem users were completely excluded from swarming, for several good reasons:

- first, modem users build a great part, i would say even the majority, of the peers in the gnutella network. by excluding them you offer this very great feature to a minority of your users only.

- second, modem users are the ones who suffer the most of too slow connections. they have so little bandwidth and they shall not even be allowed to use what they have? the average download rate on limewire for a modem user is about 2.0 kb/s. if you ever tried to download a 100mb file using a modem you know while it is absolutely necessary to support this group as well.

- third, if only highspeed connections support swarming, than highspeed and lowspeed connections are no longer peers. if a cable user wants to download a 700 mb divx movie, he might swarm from 6 connections, let's say 3 of them are modems. thus, he decreases the bandwidth of 3 modem users (who just have ~7 kbps). as these modem users are not necessarily running limewire you cannot guarantee that they are not used for swarm sources. however, they are not allowed to swarm from anybody themselves. therefore, swarming only helps highspeed users, while at the same time it could even harm lowspeed users.

- fourth, there is a social matter you have to regard: not everybody can afford highspeed internet, in some regions there is no way to get highspeed internet. therefore, it is support for better suited or better located people only.

- fifth, i hardly believe that there would be so much a loss of upload slots, because every slot would be used for a correspondingly shorter period of time. you just guarantee that the given connections are used up to their very limit. if this makes people to download more and therefore shortens the number of uplaod slots, well - i don't think one should decrease performance in order to make users download less. especially, you only make modem users download less - highspeed users can and *will* download more stuff, and they usually are the ones who download most. how many modem users are actually downloading 700mb divx movies ? i hardly know any, and if í do, they did it once and never again.

- sixth, if you are really concerned on not having enough upload slots on the network, than the first thing you should do is to remove the option to throttle upload bandwidth. many users just put it near or to zero in order to maximize download speed. eDonkey, for example, doesn't allow you to have more than thrice the speed for download than you have for upload.

well, these are my reasons. i strongly hope that you will enable swarming for modem users in the final release. other file sharing applications do it as well. you could make it optional and have this option disabled as a default for modem users, if you really think that it would help the network if modem users didn't swarm.
however i can't believe that you are giving such a great feature to the "upper class" only.