When I start up Limewire (in Mac OSX 10.2.4, DSL connection), one of two things happens: the title bar reads "Limewire: Running the Gnutella Network," in which case I generally have a very good chance of finding what I'm looking for and d/ling it quickly.

On the other hand, about 50% of the time the title bar will read "Limewire: Running the Gnutella Network (x files/x.x GB available)." When this happens, it doesn't matter how many files Limewire tells me is available, I know I don't stand a snowball's chance in burning hell of downloading anything in any reasonable time. Just this morning I did a search for a file and among numerous results got a search result that claimed that 52 hosts had the same file. I clicked on it to download, and after about 45 seconds of waiting, I connected with ONE host and the file started coming across at the blazing speed of 1k per second. Gee, another hour and a half and I'll be done!

What exactly is the significance of the "(x files/x.x GB available)" showing up when it does and why does it always indicate impending failure?