For some time www.limewire.com has been posting rolling usage graphs. Importantly, these show continuing growth (a recent high registered more than 30,000 simultaneous servants). But I am troubled by the apparent increased volatility in the numbers. Does anyone have any idea if this is:
a) a data collection / statistical problem,
b) related to some new instability in the gnutella network as it continues to scale,
c) a peculiarity in the way gnutella users access the network, coming and going in huge lemming-like surges, or
d) some sort of pulsating breakdown of the network into discontiguous segments, followed by re-integration, or
e) something else I haven't thought of?
The scalability or lack thereof of gnutella has received much discussion. It is wonderful to see the statistics show consistently higher highs as we blow past old ideas of theoretical maxima. Still, the volatility in limewire's statistics suggests that all is not well.

Thoughts?