I've been trying to find a definitive explanation of OOB (out of band) searching and I'm coming up empty. I find divergent theories out there on what it is--as if it's some mysterious entity understood only by the developers--and opposing opinions on whether or not to have it enabled.

I'm getting frustrated trying to get back to the searching performance that I used to have back in the days of dialup and Mac OS 9 and older versions of LW that had different Options configurations--and, I suspect, possibly an older Gnutella network topology. That's why I'd like to know what's *really* up with OOB, for 100% sure.

LW's options says OOB Searching "results in faster result delivery to your client". How??
LW's options says "some internet connections may not work well w/ this feature". Which ones, and why?

TIA!

Out of Band means results are sent straight to you instead of routing them back on the same path as the requests were sent. It's done via UDP which requires a proper Network setup (Port Forwarding) and Equipment (some faulty Routers crash for example).

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Thanks! Hmm. Would it be fair to say that while OOB searching might yield faster results than non-OOB, those results could be less complete? Or if not less complete, maybe just different?

You should see the exact same search results if everything is working correctly. Not properly configured Routers & Firewalls and faulty Routers can however lead to less or no search results at all. LimeWire tries to detect such cases and falls back to the "classic" model if necessary.