How to disable swarming/download from multiple hosts
 

Hello,

I'm running LimeWire 2.9.6, and am experiencing a problem where I uncheck grouping, then double-click on a file from one host, and watch as it automatically starts downloading from 2-3 hosts, some that weren't in the original search. I have disabled Ultrapeer capabilities -- how do I turn this swarming feature off? When I listen to what was downloaded, the song jumps from one section to the next, it didn't verify the filesize from the sources it attempted to download these from.

Thanks,

Gambo

If the file is broken during the download, LimeWire will show you a message that the file is corrupted and whether you want to keep it or not. If this message has not been shown, the file was transferred correctly and any problems with the file are not caused by swarming.

You cannot shut swarming off.

I was actually sampling the files before they were completely downloaded. It happens on about 1 of 4 files -- I can tell when it switches over, for example it will play 10 seconds of one part of the song, then 5 seconds of another version, then go back to the first version. In watching how it was downloading it, it matches when it was swarming from multiple download sources. Is there not a registry setting or ini file change that will disable this? Are there any previous versions of LimeWire that do not use this technology that still work on the latest Gnutella system? This problem is separate from the corrupted prompt.

I won't say that is impossible, but the chances two different files are mixed during download are like one in a million, because LimeWire and other gnutella clients are calculating a checksum (a sha-1 hash) for every file they have. LimeWire will only swarm from files with exactly the same sha-1 hash.

Anyway, I do not believe your problem has anything to do with swarming. I suspect the apparently corrupted files are really perfectly okay, they are just not downloaded completely, so your player will jump alot when playing those incomplete files.

Swarming cannot be shut off (except you modify the source code) and the older versions, that do not have swarming are versions like 1.8 or 1.9 and they cannot connect to Gnutella anymore.

Perhaps older vendors aren't handling the hash properly?

I've noted that swarmed downloads are still troublesome, especially when they don't grow sequentially. Vendor seems to be the variable here.
For example, after starting to download a 118.2 MB .mpg file, I noticed in the
Library tab > Incomplete download showed the file at 59MB, then it jumped within a few seconds to 91MB after it started swarming from another source, vendor/version LimeWire 2.3.4. It kept growing every few seconds by a few k.

Swarmed for a while from 2 hosts, then it stalled after a few hours. Then another file of the same name + 1 showed up in the incomplete list (no additional download clicked in Search pane). Both files grew to >100MB of the 118.2 MB listed over the next few hours. Then nothing for a few more hours. Occasionally other clients would continue the download for a while, then LimeWire 2.3.4 showed up again and continue at a slow but steady 1 or 2 KB/s. The progress bar (at ~75%) slowly kept growing, even though the file sizes in the Library>incomplete display didn't change. One showed the original file at the full 118.2; the other at 106.2MB. Don't know which file was being "filled up." After about 27 hours, the 106.2 started growing again, and successfully completed in 28 1/2 hrs at an av of 4KB/s. The Txxxxetc.mpg , was choppy when played, but seemed to have all the scenes.

I'm hoping older vendors are the problem rather than malicious hosts. Could spammers fake the file size displayed?