How about showing us the Ping
 

I don't know if I am falling behind the technology but it seems like EVERYONE's got a T1 or T3 these days, frankly I don't believe that and I don't quite understand why would a person click T1 or T3 while he/she's only got a 56k?

those connection type means nothing to us, how about replace it with the ping? so I don't try to download from a "T3" wannabe with ping in the thousands

In TCP/IP, a ping only measures the amount of time it takes for a signal to travel from source to destination. It doesn't reveal anything about the speed of the destination. I could get a ping of 50ms from someone with a 56K modem who could theoretically be living right next door to me. Likewise, I could get a 1000ms ping from someone with a T3 who is 5000 miles away from me. In either case, the ping doesn't tell me the speed of the person's connection. I, for one, wouldn't appreciate starting a download from a source with a really low ping (like 50 to 100ms) only to find that they're running a 56k modem.

Speed
 

I don't know why those generic speed descriptions are used at all. It would make more sense for LimeWire to actually measure your average upload speed and advertise it in KB/s.

I know exactly what "ping" is, you are right, but I think it's still better than just a "cnonection type" that users select by themselves

Like SJF said.

Ping has nothing to do with speed. I'm too busy to explain at the moment.

All i have to say is, if you download from a user on 28.8k modem with a ping of 10, it will be lots slower than the T3 user with a ping of 7800.

(Lower ping = better, btw).

... ping is the time it takes for a package travel from a to b and back to a. lower ping does not indicate better connection type.
but correct me if I am wrong, a cable/DSL user is "LIKELY" to have lower ping than a dial-up, right?

That's exactly what I am talking about, I want to see ping and I don't care about their connection types. They can all be T3 if that boosts their ego, all I care to see is the ping. I think that's what I said in the first post, if I didn't make myself clear.. sorry about that.

sounds like you're on to something. it does me no good when i choose to download something from a T1 or T3 connection and the transfer rate is 2.0 kb/s!! what a waste

also, what happened to the ip address field. i liked seeing whether soemone was behind a firewall or not

Correct, both times.

(Had one minute left of class, sorry for not being able to explain any further.)

Tx users can send -much- more data at any given time than a 33/56k modem user.

Ping is just the delay of the data.

Higher ping = longer travel distance
Lower ping = lower travel distance

Soo, a T3 user, with a "bad" ping, will STILL be better to download from than the "good" ping 56k user.

Sorry, but no.

Quote:

Ping is just the delay of the data. Higher ping = longer travel distance Lower ping = lower travel distance

Not always.

A higher ping can also be caused by net congestion, packet loss, and bad hardware along the way. Therefore, higher ping times are not always a sign of distance.

Quote:

Soo, a T3 user, with a "bad" ping, will STILL be better to download from than the "good" ping 56k user.

Again no.

If the cause of a high ping on a T3 is because of bad hardware or packet loss, then file transfers will be affected as well. I'll take a rock solid 5Kbps from a modem user over a transfer that fluctuates from 0Kbps to 50Kbps intermittantly from a T3 user sitting behind a bad router anyday.

LOL. Thats what i was gonna say, but I wasnt sure exactly how it worked. I was gonna use a nice VW Bug vs Mack Truck analogy, to explain it better.

I didnt even -think- about packet loss due to bad hardware, connections. I kept equating distance ::LOL::.

Thx again for clarifying that.

I don't know, but I think it was Napster (god please bring back napster) that showed ping and I always went for those with lower ping, it's usually the faster ones. I just did a search that turned out 263 results, there was ONLY 5 cable modem users, 37 T1, and the rest ALL T3... something's wrong in this picture... if you can only display user-selected connection types, you might as well erease that field.. it's useless, untrue information.

How bout autodetecting speed?

Doing an upload and download bandwith test during the install, no manual selection.

Then, if a user tries to block the speed test, or doesn't want to perform it, dont install.

A user can stop all internet activities and install so he gets a near-perfect performance mark for his connection type. but who knows how many other sharing program he's running or how many files he's downloading at the time you are doing the search?

suggestions
 

how about a dynamic autospeed test? the test could test say once every hour and then the speed would change according to what the test results were.

Re: suggestions
 

Sounds good. Small file test, though. Mebbe 100k. To not screw with the 56k'ers.

What file would you want to download? And where from? And how would you make sure it's the local host causing a lower speed and not the remote host?

D/l from a HTTP server, of course. Not from a remote host.


(edit: by "not a remote host" I meant not from any old gnutella user.)

A HTTP server is a remote host. And who do you think is willing to put up a server for that? Something like that could easily generate a few GB of traffic per hour...

True.

There has to be a way that we can accurately measure throughput speed without needing a special server to hammer.

How bout.... when the user downloads files, it takes the speed of the d/l every few second(10kb/s, 20kb/s, 15kb/s...) and then averages it. It then stores it in a database. When the user gets an upload request, it averages the upload the same way.

Then, the avg. upload & download speeds, max recorded upload & download speeds could be reported when you hover over the person with your mouse to d/l.

(hover tooltip)
-------------------------------------------
| Client Name_.: Default_______.| (1)
| Avg/Max UL__: 25/31 KB/s____.|
| Avg/Max DL__: 43/55 KB/s____.|
| Files Shared_.: 156 (405MB)___| (2)
| Curent ULs__.: 1 (2 slots left)__| (3)
| Est. Wait____: 0 sec_________| (4)
| IP Address__.: 121.56.16.xxx__| (5)
-------------------------------------------

1.) Let clients name themselves. Mainly just to have names in the chat window.
2.) Let users know how many files a person is sharing (amount and overall size)
3.) Let users know how many files a person is currently uploading, and number of slots left.
4.) Estimated wait time before downloading a file (queue length, basically)
5.) IP address, masking last octet.

Edit: Screw Ping Times. I thought it was a "might as well" sort of thing. But they -are- useless, after all.

hmmm...
I'm behind a masqeradung firewall whith trafficshaping enabled.
The 4 users in my LAN get about 22k/s downstream and 4k/s upstream.
You would have to measure both values to be efficient.
If Limewire found out that I had 22K/s and if it then would allow uploads up to 22k/s I would be screwed.

Why measure my download speed? It's usually my upload speed that matters for other users.

Maybe LW coud do a check on the IP address of the users downloading from me, and calculate the max speed for users with IP addresses in valid public internet subnets.
That would exclude the special trafficshaping rules for LAN users on my network.

I agree the connection type is worthless, so what is wrong with ping?
Why would you need to test the upload and download speed of the computer?
I thought that ping tested them both, and ping reflects weither the download would be good or not. It tests your connection to their computer, you don't need it to do anything else.
To not slow down bandwith, you could have users click on a new "ping" button to test the ping, so they don;t test everybodys

Another reason it should be by ping,
My cable connection, is actually faster than some t1s!
t1's go around 1500, while my cable is 2844! (kb/s)

A ping only measures the amount of time a signal takes to go from point A (presumably your computer) to point B (a remote destination). It DOES NOT measure the speed of the connection of the remote destination.

Because most of us with broadband connections want to download from others at broadband speeds.... not dial up speeds.

Nope. Let me illustrate this with an example. Let's say you ping a host and it comes back with a ping time of 50ms. Now, how fast is that connection? Is it a modem user, a cable user, a DSL user, a T1 user, or a T3 user? You can't tell until you actually start the download... but the fact remains that a 50ms ping time could come from a 56K modem user just as easily as it could come from a T3 user. Likewise, let's say you get a ping time of 1000ms from a particular connection. Now, how fast is that connection? Again, you can't tell until you start the download. You could get a 1000ms (or higher) ping from any type of connection given the right circumstances.

I would rather see the connection type than any ping nonsense.