Managing Slowpokes on the Superhighway
 

It would be *great* if there was a setting to disallow slowpokes from hogging all of my download slots for too long.

(Due to confusion, I am deleting the original post for clarity.)

Here's one idea:
http://www.outlawwebdesigns.com/temp/LW_suggestion.png

Let's please move the slowpokes out of the InfoSuperhighway fastlane.

Thanks.

Mmmm yeah.

Problem is that many people are (rightfully) complaining that all the "fast" guys are also the ones serving fake/corrupted/infected with all kinds of malware files.
Soooo, if you eliminate all the slow ones (who, by the way, are more likely to have rare files) then almost all you got is crap files.
I for one don't want that.
And patience is a virtue :D

You must be a Republican. :)
 

Uh, you'd better re-read my post. I'm am NOT suggesting cutting YOU off from downloading from THEM, I'm saying they should be cut off after an monopolizing one of your upload slots for hours.

Nope. I'm an ermit.
 

Ok ok. I'll reformulate my post a bit:
If I have a 1KBps connection and all I can download from you is 200% (that's 200KB then), then what happens if you are the only one that has the file? Or if you are the only one I can connect to that has the file (basically the same)?
I'll wait for ages until you release an upload slot. And even then, how sure can I be that I'll get that upload slot?

Let's say modem users all had 56k connections. That's theoretical 7KBps.
With a setting of getting 200% of your max upload bandwidth before being cut off, they'd get 1400KB of a file, which isn't even half of a decently encoded .mp3...
Besides, as I said, that speed is theoretical: even if you have a 7KBps connnection you are more likely to get around 3 to 5KBps.

Not everyone can afford a broadband connection and for some people it ain't even available where they live.

Hmm, now that I think about it, LW would have to calculate one's max speed in order to determine what the 200% would be for that user.
In other words, how does your LW know my max dld speed?
And what happens if I put Modem instead of Cable/DSL in the Options menu?

What happens.
 

Then after you've downloaded 200KB (or in my revised solution, after downloading for x# of hours - see pic above), you are moved back into the queue, finally giving someone else a chance for a change. Eventually you'll return to the front of the line, and since "bandwidth hogs" are cut off after so long, you know it won't be forever before you return to the front of the line.

Is that so unreasonable?

How much is that affecting you?

LimeWire should allocate additional upload slots automatically, if you still have free upload speed left, so a slowpoke shouldn't do much damage.

It is also possible, that a slowpoke is someone, who downloads the file from many sources at once, so that the 1Mbit cable he uses gets divided among a few hundred sources (which isn't possible with LW, afaik, because it seems to only ose about 6 connectsions on my DSL-connection).

Instead of moving a slowpoke back in the queue, LimeWire just opens a new slot, which still lets slow users download from you, but doesn't allow them to hog all slots and waste bandwidth.

More slots divides limited u/l bandwidth
 

"How much does it affect *me*"? Depends.

My DSL maximum upload speed appears to be around 20-30KB/s. I don't allow unlimited upload slots to avoid having 200 users all downloading at 10 bytes a second. Instead, I limit to just 2 uploads at once.

Frequently, I'll see people trying to download a very large file at 1K/s. Perhaps, as you say, they are getting the file from multiple sources, but wouldn't it be faster to get it from two or three users at 20KB/s than 10 at < 1KB/s? (the number of sources on any download is limited to a max of about 8 or so).

As for "affecting me", if someone like you is allowing an unlimited number of upload slots, then it might take me forever to download something from you because your bandwidth is stretched to the breaking point.

Ah but that is just a question of setting correctly the Upload slots options then.
One should never have their upload slots set to unlimited, even if acting only as a "seeder".

But since you *can* do that under LimeWire (ie: too many upload slots), then the solution would be to disallow anyone from setting more than X# of slots depending upon their connection setting (yes, I know some can lie and override this, as does the nut above, but why?)

Limit modem users to 5 upload slots max, DSL users: 20, etc...

But since the ultimate goal is to move "squatters" along after so many hours, isn't the ultimate solution still the one shown in my illustration above?)

Because with partial filesharing even a slow bandwidth helps. It is important, to get files out, but even when you set max slots to unlimited, LimeWire will only give out a new slot, when your bandwidth isn't maxed out, so you don't get more and more slowpokes, when you already have fast nodes in your upload queue.

Just try to remember the time, when you were a squatter yourself. And even if you never were: Try to imagine, you only had a slow connection. Now think about trying to get a movie. It might take you 5 days, maybe even 5 weeks. But you'll get it eventually, and those slow ones often are ones, who share, because they are in less danger of prosecution than those with fast connections.

Harass them like you propose, and they'll choose another network, and we'll lose shares, then search results will get worse and users are likely to choose other networks, even when they get slightly higher download speeds, because they don't get reasonable results anymore.