I've read quite a bit about this issue. I saw the posting for a tcp windows system patch to undo the XP SP2 change.

My understanding is that the security flag is set because of a large number of half-open connections - not a large number of connections. That seems to follow since limewire often chokes when I first start it because it hits the limit while starting all the initial connections/downloads. Windows queues the tcp requests (not well, I lose connectivity for current downloads). It eventually sorts through the queue of connection requests and downloads start blazing. I believe that Limewire also times out many requests thus causing the needs more sources issue at the very beginning (more reason to just leave limewire running).

My understanding of a half open connection is one in which a request was sent but not acknowledged. The story from MS is that it helps to cut down on worms that send out 1000's of requests a second with the hope of getting just a few connections. Regardless of whether that's true or MS is doing it for licensing, the problem exists. And it exists in Vista too.

I'd like Limewire to give me a throttle variable so that it will never hit that connection limit. Let me set it in the options screen in case MS changes the limit at some point (perhaps you can default it to the existing value). Limewire should act at the throttle/traffic cop - not windows. That way the limewire statistics won't be skewed (connections,etc).

thanks
Herschel