I am using gnut-0.4.xx on Linux as gnutella client and I have used Limewire too.

I think that the gnutella network wuold work much better if ADSL (or lower bandwidth) users would set max_uploads to 1.

Suppose I am sharing a 10MB file, and my outgoing bandwidth is 10kBps.
It would take 1000s to upload to one (the only) downloader, and then we both could serve that file to others.
While it would take 2000s to upload to two downloaders, and at the and the number of servers is three times than before.

Generally speaking, the number of servers that can share a given content obeys the law:

N=(1+L)**(t/(T*L))

Where L is the number of uploads running, T is the time necessary to complete a download when you are the only downloader and t is the observation window span (this assumes that all servers are always busy)

If you try and diagram the function above with for example t/T = 30 (let's say a 10MB file, and sharing at night), you'll see that the result for L=1 is well above (orders of magnitude) any other choice of the number of upward connections.

I would like to be warned is this is flawed.
If not, I would like ADSL users knew about it.

Stefano