... because of all the freeloaders.

there must be a ton of new freeloaders then because my results have gone WAY down....

LimeWire ultrapeers try limiting the number of results to 240 (although you might get more results at times).

But the average OpenNap user is sharing ~ 20GB for example, the average Gnutella user is sharing ~ 200MB. So much about the ton of freeloaders.

I have to agree that the search results have suffered since upgrading to 2.9.8. previously with 2.8.x, if I upped my connection above 6, I would generally find what I'm looking for. Now I get almost nothing. Even on the simple searches. I seriously think you need to revisit the connections option.

Get this: I have 500+ files shared on my computer. It's up 24x7. My freind does a search and does not get a hit for anything on my PC. Is something wrong with this picture?

The new LimeWire ultrapeers stop the search once they have returned 80 results (50 if you are using an older version of LimeWire). Maybe your friend's search wasn't specific enough - or the distance between the ultrapeers you and your friend connected to is too big to be crossed by a search. (If your messages have to cross 5 or 6 ultrapeers before they reach your friend, you will never find a file from each other).

I'm not a freeloader - I keep TONS of stuff to share in my Limewire share folder and rotate it periodically to have fresh sharesies. But I'm with the other guy here: 2.9.8 sucks. I just d/l'd it and was VERY pissed off to find I cannot reset the number of connections higher. I don't pretend to be able to argue all the leaf vs. ultrapeer vs. whateverwhoosywhatsits and I'm not even gonna try. All I know is before I could find anything & everything & almost ALWAYS got a live d/l. Now even though my search results are fairly OK (not as good as before), I can't d/l ANYTHING. I keep getting this crap about "waiting for sources". Waiting my *** ... they are right there in the search results.

Fix it or put it back, but do something, folks, this sucks compared to before. Like I said, I don't pretend to understand how it is *theoretically* SUPPOSED to work. All I know is the RESULTS ARE NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE. And that's all I care about here: performance. It's gone down. End of story. No amount of logic over how it is SUPPOSED to be better is going to erase that. No amount of debate is going to make those downloads appear where they used to be but now are not thanks to 2.9.8 - and here I upgraded to be a good Gnutella citizen, too. *snort*

Next version is going to connect to 2 ultrapeers instead of 3. The number of results will be limited to ~100 and older versions are heavily disadvantaged by new ultrapeers which will only return ~30 results to older leafs.

Hello!

I also read about this in the mail by Adam. Does this mean that the next version will never give out more then 200 hits from a search?

Or are you talking about per UltraPeer in total meaning a potentional of well over a thousand hits?

I am a bit confused about this!

No, it means that the most you can get in total is maybe 150 or 200 search results. But it's very likely that, if you repeat a search, you will receive different results.

if it is broke, don't break it more
 

I wasn't holding a grudge against LimeWire for the latest version. As best as I can tell, you guys honestly thought it would help the network.
However, what we now know is that it DOESN'T.

And now, although it should be clear that this is punishing everyone on the network, from freeloaders to UltraPeers, the fine folks at LimeWire have decided to make it WORSE.

My experience has echoed everyone else's - I was using 5 connections and usually had 800 - 1200 hosts. The highest I've seen it since I "upgraded" was around 650, and I haven't had a download connect in over a week.

If LimeWire continues to "improve" by taking ideas that failed and implementing them harder, my 2-3 gigs are definitely leaving the software, maybe the network. The 30+ people who downloaded from me today will have to go elsewhere.