Can anyone explain why I continue to get pings/requests (i am not sure what to call them) to Port 6346 long after I leave Limewire?

I have a cable connection and my firewall is Zone Alarm Standard. It is right now registering over 500 requests an hour! While it is not normaly this high, I always get alot after I disconnect. It usually seems to tail off over time, but this time it isn't.

I am careful to first hit the "disconnect" button, let the disconnect occur, and then close the program. This problem occurs if I disconnect while I am downloading and others are uploading, or if there is no ongoing up or down activity before I disconnect.

Is this normal, or should my IP address somehow be de-listed once I disconnect and log off?

This is normal. You IP address is stored temporarily in everyone else's (other hosts) host cache. This is why you can reconnect to the network quickly should you be disconnected. In order to establish a connection, they ping you for a while, but eventually give up. Also, if you are uploading a file, the person who was downloading will try to resume the download, once again, using pings. When your client (LW) fails to respond, the other client software gives up and says "Couldn't Download" or whatever. This is nothing to worry about. :-)

To explain why you sometimes have more pings after disconnects than at other times, I will offer you this possiblity. If you were connected to a larger number of hosts than usual, more people will have you in their cache and attempt to make connections to you. And, if someone searched for a file that you have before you disconnected, they may try to download from you. Their search results list is not updated in realtime (due to the attempt to keep bandwidth usage at a practical level), and they will try downloading from you until their client gives up or they just say"forget it." Hope this helps you out! :-)

This happens to me all the time, only people don't give up on the files, I've shut my computer off for over 4 hours, and when I turn it back on again, I get those messages again.
The best things I have found to do is to either:
1.) Stay connected all the time, not always an option though.
2.) Disconnect from the network around 20 minutes before you plan to be done with it, after you are done searching, but before you have finished downloading files. This should give people time to finish some of the files, and will cut you off from further searches.

That said, the pings are completely harmless, so aside from being a slight annoyance, you don't have much to worry about.

) Thanks for both of the replies. Now that I know that my address remains in the host cache, I can see why I still get the requests.

It is amazing, over 24 hours of being disconnected and I still am getting over 500 pings an hour! Don't people ever disconnect (and clear their cache)? I suppose this isn't a bandwidth waster because it is a direct connection between the two computers?

Again, thanks for the replies

I believe that a majority of Gnutella servants are left on for days, even weeks at a time. Notice how many T1, T3, and DSL connections are present? Most people cannot afford T1 or T3 lines. So where do they come from? From the workplace, and not the home. I'm guessing most people leave LW (or whatever servant/client they have) on at work until they have to restart the computer, which on many NT sytstems, could easily be longer than a week (that is, if it doesn't crash before then). So, theoretically, many of the Gnutella clients could be left on for days at a time (this makes the network much healthier). Also, you may be wondering why you would keep getting pings when no one is searching with their unattended node. But remember, LimeWire is constantly trying to make new connections as others die out or fail.

If you want to clear your host cache, simply go to the connections tab and hit the "clear" button in the bottom-right-hand corner.

Sending pings and pongs (pongs being slightly larger) doesn't consume a whole lot of bandwidth, unless you are sending/receiving massive amounts of them. If you monitor your bandwidth, you will see that the Gnutella traffic can easily clog your connection (dial up is maxed out at somewhere over 2k hosts). Watch your bandwidth when you are connected to thousands of users. Set a limit on how many connections can be maintained at once to limit traffic if need be.

Hope this way-too-long post helped. :-)