I have seen that in v1.7 quite a few options like TTL have been removed. This is quite a problem when searching for quite rare files, because you sometimes have to search several times until find what you're looking for. I don't think this will reduce network load, and it certainly is not comfortable. Would it be possible to make it possible in future releases to change the TTL on a per-search basis?

Yeah, we tossed this one around for awhile. Who knows, we may put it back at some point. Our basic thinking was that most people (completely understandably) probably did not know what the ttl did, and may have simply changed it without realizing why.

That said, it is still possible to change your ttl directly in the limewire.props file. Unfortunately, this would not work per search. It would simply reset the ttl at the beginning of your LimeWire session. The field is simply called "TTL." You could change it from the current:

TTL=7

to, say,

TTL=8 or 9.

We did bump it up to 7 for this release, and you really should not need much more than that. Incleasing the ttl dramatically increases network traffic, as you probably know. I would really not recommend anything over 8, as a ttl of 8 likley quadruples the total number of messages sent over a ttl of 7. Also, any ttl over 10 will automatically get bumped down to 10 whenever it encounters another LimeWire on the search path.