What are freeloaders and whats with setting a connection preference for the # of people in your locale? would changing any of these affect how fast I download files? To look at hat im talking about go to tools/options/advanced/and they are under preferencing and locale preferencing.

Freeloaders are poeple who only use p2p in a one-way manner, meaning that they only use it to dld files from others but do not allow others to dld from them. The settings about freeloaders that are availalbe in LW were functional (notice the "were") a while ago but no more.
As with the locale thing, maybe its preferencing connection to people closer to you, but I don't really know.

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

murasame when & with which version did these functions stop working? Is it something to do with the version or is it platform specific, or the way the Gnutella netwk now works ? I've a friend who uses Kazaa & moves his shared files everytime somebody attempts to upload from him. I think that's a miserly attitude.

I don't know exactly which version was last to sport the operational freeloader-block function, but I read from one of the "veterans" that it wasn't functional anymore.

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

From now on whenever my hand is NOT raised it means I'm confused.

Actually this thread isn't confusing me, but I've been reading other posts in other threads where people are complaining about freeloaders and stuff, which is cool with me because freeloading seems rude, but I'm confused about a few things.

People seem to talk about IPs a lot and how they would like to come up with ways to ban certain IPs from downloading from them because of the freeloading issue. Also I've read people gripe about how a certain IP/person is only giving them 1KB/s.

My questions are:

1. What if someone is very generous IN GENERAL and has uploaded a zillion files over the months, but in the past few days has been having trouble and really wants to download a certain file, so he or she temporarily turns off uploading just to make it easier to get that one file? Can experienced but pi**ed off users note that IP address and add it to the sh** list somehow?

2. Usually when I go watch TV (when I'm all done downloading) I turn uploading on 100% if it's not already and come back during commercials to monitor things. Sometimes I see a whole lot of uploads that got cancelled, and sometimes (even with upload bandwidth at 100% and only a couple upload slots so that these couple slots should each be getting lots of bandwidth) each slot is uploading at like 1 or 2 KB/s. My questions is, after reading all the anger in some of these threads, are there people getting mad at me because they think I'm doing things I'm really not? How much can people really tell about me? I think in my case (and in the case of many others), the big picture about me and my habits, the big profile, would be great, but sometimes when for whatever reasons things just aren't working right, are people thinking I'm being stingy when I'm really not? I mean these peoples' posts I've read griping about someone giving them only 1KB/s, how do they know the people are stingy and not just having problems?

3. I'm going to ask this question under firewalls (and also try to read more about it) but I figured I'd ask it here anyway because it's related to me feeling leery about being involved with file sharing at this early stage when I don't know too much. I read someone gripe about firewalls, but how does someone even know a person is using a firewall and not just having problems?

TTYL :o)

I love the way you word your posts. I don't know why you should be so self-conscious b/c we're all basically anonymous anyway. I can only answer one part of your questions (murasame would be best at the other questions.) Many people like myself only have a dialup connection & I only achieve around 5-6 KB/s dwnld. If I'm dwnlding more than one file or the connection to the other party is not very good, it might be less. Also, people with better connections will often spread their dwnlds b/w several files so the speed they may get for one file 'might' be small. I've noticed that if I change my upld speed it seems to upset the uplders & they drop off after a few secs. - even when I've put it to unlimited. I don't know why this is. Do you use a firewall? Have you made sure you've maximised your upld/dwnld speeds according to your connection. There's threads discussing this here & the Upld/Dwnld section (Maximizing upload/download Success LimeWire).
My thoughts were that the threads you were refering to tended to forget about people like me.
So where are your arms now?

My arms are in the air! I'm happy and less confused! Thanks for your response!

Yeah, you know I think most of the people doing the specific sort of griping I was talking about are the less experienced users. I'm just the sort of person who doesn't wanna offend ANYONE because:

1. You never know what sort of day someone is having and you should be nice to everyone. (Being nice doesn't mean avoiding sarcasm, though.)

2. What if some dude you offend (even if you really didn't do anything wrong) is the only person who has a specific file you want?

Anyway usually I have really good luck with both downloads AND uploads, it's just that some days are better than others and every so often I have good downloads but crappy uploads. I use Norton Personal Firewall 3.0 with port 6346 open (or the whole things disabled) by the way. I realize I have more reading to do, and I find all this very interesting! I just wanna be clear in my head on some things before I share at all.

:o)

Read the sticky about configuring Limewire at the top of the Open Discussion forum (here). It isn't only directed towards broad-band users since it tells you how to configure it depending on your connection speed.
If you read it, you'll notice that I also suggest people to configure uploads: by configuring them that way, I manage to get more completed uploads as I'll have less available upload slots, but the people that download from me get their files a whole lot faster. Being able to download a file faster can mean:
-you have less chances of the download being canceled/dropped/whatever because of hosts (or you) going offline.
-you complete the download faster, thus releasing an open slot for another user, who'll also have a faster download. In other words, instead of having 100 users (again, a little exaggeration...) uploading from you with speeds ranging from a few Bytes to a couple of KiloBytes which means they would get their files after an hour, you get 10 users who will dld from you at full speed: they'll get their files in a couple of minutes, thus letting in the next 10 users come in and start downloading.

Also, I think banning a host is more of a function reserved for users serving bad files, viruses and various other stuff like that.
Besides, some people have IP adresses that change every now and then.

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

Murasame-

I'll read that and then mostly likely get back to you and praise you, since your information has never been anything less than very helpful....

Also I read the broadband stuff you told me to read and that was great, too. Thanks again.

Just to be clear though, when (for whatever reasons) I'm having a bad upload day (which lately has been rare; things are going pretty well) and people are getting only 2 Kb/s from me, more experienced users do NOT assume then that it's any conscious decision or action on my part? In other words they know it may be something OTHER than my having rudely turned the upload settings to the absolute minimum?

Thanks again and TTYL :o)

Hey, I figure they're thinking: "this user lets me download from them so I won't ban him". Even if you did turn uploading to the minimum, I don't think you'd get banned because:
-even if the others downloading from you can see what kind of connection you have (Cable, modem, blah blah...), there's no way I know that would allow them to see how many uploads you have and since many uploads mean lower speeds for the ones downloading from you... For all they know you could have a thousand active uploads.
-if we banned those who upload, then the network would die as all that would remain would be users behind firewalls and/or users that have disabled uploading altogether.

In short, no, I don't think that you'll get banned for having a bad upload day.

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-