LimeWire 2.4.4 "Multiple Source Download" broken
 

When Limewire downloads a file from multiple sources, it doesn't check if the sources are IDENTICAL. In the result you get corrupted files.

I suggest that LimeWire should implement checksum routines, which ensure that sources are identical.

Until this problem is fixed, there should be an option to turn off multiple source downloads.

Checksum detection will be implemented in the next version.
Did LimWire actually corrupt you files?!

> Did LimWire actually corrupt you files?!

Yes, some MP3's were "mixed" from unidentical sourcefiles.

It sounded like listening to a CD while shaking your CD player.

Well, that never happened to me.
I guess you'll have to wait till the next version.

Sheesh. This explains a lot about recent file downloads that turned out crappy. I've had pops in MP3 files, and in one case I actually heard part of a different song mixed in with one; I thought it was just the way the remix was done, but now I'm not so sure.

Shouldn't checksumming be a requirement for any kind of multiple-source downloads? It seems hasty to have implemented swarmed downloads without it.

(BTW, code gurus, please take a look at the "No UPLOADS happening here" thread. There's definitely a serious bug that's causing uploads to send out the first packet and then simply sit and wait forever until they time out. This bug has existed since at least 2.2, and is completely unrelated to firewall issues as some have suggested.)

Lots of files on the network are corrupted. Clicks and Pops are very frequently due to somebody ripping the music and not listening to it before posting (or listening and not caring) - most music rippers will not cope properly with scratched or dirty CDs if the error correction cannot fix the problem on the first pass.

Mixed tracks is a problem but not from the gnutella network as far as I am aware. These are probably files that have been brought across from the fasttrack network (old morpheus) which had a tendency to distribute such corrupted files.

I don't guarantee that there isn't a fault in the swarming code - but I have swarmed files that aren't corrupt and I know there are plenty of people sharing corrupt files...

In order to know that this is a LimeWire problem it really needs people to watch their downloads and make a note of whether a file is corrupt and whether that file was swarmed.

If such a tally shows that swarmed files are corrupt significantly more often then non-swarmed files then this can be reported as a bug. In the meantime, I think the simpler answer is there are people happily sharing corrupt files.

Mark

> Mixed tracks is a problem but not from the gnutella network as far as I am aware. These are probably
> files that have been brought across from the fasttrack network (old morpheus) which
> had a tendency to distribute such corrupted files

I think a good counterargument to that theory is, that some of the corrupted songs were pretty new.

It is a bit of a counter argument - but quite a few people run multiple networks and people are still moving between networks.

There /may/ be a problem with swarming. There might not be.

The only way to be certain is to keep an accurate track of what was swarmed, what wasn't and what is corrupted.

It is way to easy for people to think they see a pattern where none actually exists (particularly when they are assuming the existence of that pattern).

Mark