very slow despite fast connections on both ends
 

My broadband cable internet connection is rated very high by all of the online tests I've run, but I'm getting really slow bandwidth through Limewire ( sometimes much less than 1K per second.) My statistics page shows that, on average, between 80-90% of my signal is constantly being dropped. Why is this? I realize that download speeds are always dependent on the computers I'm connected to, but if the file is supposedly on a T1 or Cable/DSL server, why am I getting such tiny bandwidth from the few ultrapeers I'm able to see? Everyone says Limewire is the way to go, but before I invest in Limewire Pro, I want to make sure that it will really work.

Probably there's no quick fix for us, as you've noticed by the posts.

Your ultrapeers might be overloaded, the stats are easily misinterpreted, and you're not alone. Work is progessing on a new version (see http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=19197), and the Free connects just as well as the Pro. There are other clients available, so trying another for your OS will help you get a feel if the problems are with Limewire or just Gnutella in general.

Gnutella traffic is sometimes blocked by ISP's and hindered by home routers/firewalls, so getting a clean connection is tough. Someone once uploaded from me at peaks of 125 (the 800 MB averaged 79k/sec), but 1 and 4k/sec were much more common.

What you get back from the host you are talking to depends on the options set by the user on that end. If the sending computer has, say, 16 upload slots, but only home cable internet, what you receive is going to be in the range of 1K-4K. Also, cable internet access, unless you are paying for commercial-grade, is roughly 256K-324K inbound to you and only 40K-64K upload from you. So, if you have 8 outbound connections evenly using the 40-64K of bandwidth, the individual uploads are only running at 5K-8K each. The same is true of the host(s) sending to you. Bandwidth into/out of a given computer is shared between all uploads and downloads. If you are dealing with a host running less than a T1 (I think that's probably most of us), you shouldn't expect the speed you get when you go to a website and download an executable using http or ftp protocol on the high speed connections most websites use.