It is a sad note that cosburn and I (and many others in this forum) agree on, LimeWire IS just impossibly slow in our experience.

I tried acquisition and acqlite to check whether it was just something I had done wrong in LW. Although what exactly can one do "wrong" when there is so little to adjust? They both have about the same problems as LW (being based on it) with acqlite showing a little more dogged determination in actually finishing a few files, even if ever so slowly.

I have become accustomed to being "guilty of something" everytime software doesn't perform as advertised.

Seeing as coburn broached on the subject of the quality of the replies, I suppose I can pick it up without being accused of rancor. He is right and I didn't previously persue it, but the answers illuminate nothing. Just leave us sitting here listening to the commentary on the "excellent stitching" on the Emperor's Clothes and being lectured on our lack of forum etiquette. After all one musn't mention His Eminence's regal elephantiasis or flacid pink flesh no matter how they confront's one's senses.

So cosburn have you tried the "s'ware that must remain nameless"? What is your opinion, does it work or not? Does it work better than LW or not?

In this forum, which only consists of people who
a/ can be bothered,
b/ have actually found there way here
c/ have not been chased off by the minders
there seems to be plenty of evidence to back up that assertion
I have no firewall running, nor did before and my ISP doesn't let me play with their server. I have the same set-up as for the competing s'ware.
I occassionally get short bursts at max about 1.5 - 2kb/s. The software that remains nameless will surge frequenty to 27kb
Hmm this is laboring the obvious. I do that and... ? Was something supposed to happen?
I am incessantly chasing multiple and new sources to little or no avail. If LW worked properly this wouldn't be even up for dicussion. Needless to say the STSRN laregly obviates the need to do this because the download... downloads. Isn't that what is supposed to happen?
Hmmm, why didn't I think of that ? s;-)
Days, weeks, months, never... what is "respectable" ?
Again what's new? Just with LW this is a recipe for even more incomplete files.
Try another product? Sorry that would only be the resort of the desperate!

Ursula I noted your reference to Virii and background activities, obviously you are a Windows or Linux user.

Since both cosburn and I are using Mac OSX, is this what we are missing?

Is it essential to have Virii, Trojans, worms and miscellaneous Microsoft patches and infestations running in the background to get LW to work properly?

If so we may as well give up now, because it ain't going to happen s;-)

rubaiyat: if you don't have a firewall/router there is likely bandwidth throttle from your ISP, call them to see if they block gnutella, 2ko/s is impossible...

Ooooh I'm too shy, I don't know them that well, besides as PC users they tend to adopt a vacant look as soon as I say I have a Mac.

btw Poisoned scans:

Gnutella
gift
FastTrack
OpenFT

The searched/download file has an icon indicating from which of these it is sourced.

Possibly there is something in LW that exploits a feature or tool only found in PCs, but Poisoned being written for Mac OSX uses the equivalent or better native function to achieve it's results.

I am curious that they are all written in Java (which I thought Microsoft had sent into exile on PCs).

Well I overcame my shyness and spoke to the Techies at my ISP.

They report no cap on transfers nor block on Gnutella, particularly no reason for a slow down during the hours I inhabit (after midnight).

As I have reported acqlite seems to be a better client than LW. It seems to connect for longer and see a file through to completion far better than LW but nowhere as well as Poisoned does.

Poisoned though is tapping into the much much bigger giftd network, 3.25m users as opposed to only 97k Gnutella. That alone would probably indicate better success, but it rarely gets as many multiple sources as LW. Despite the lack of multiple sources, when Poisoned connects it persists usually to completion and at a far greater speed than LW.

I might risk putting my PC onto the outside net (hope I don't regret the decision). I'll experiment with LW on there, it really has my curiosity aroused that we have such different experiences.

Yes try on the PC. Note that acqlite and acquisition are using the limewire core and they built a gui on top of it so the performance should be the same. Also, the gift network (openfastrack) is very small (1000-6000 users), it's the fastrack plugin (3,1 millions from Kazaa) and the gnutella plugin (30k-70k from Bearshare clients) that up the total number in Poisoned. Also note that on P2P the network population does not relate to the number of users you search. For exemple you may search only 60 000 unique users in gnutella while that number is maybe lower for fasttrack (kazaa).

Ciao

Ah, Peerless... What would we do without you ?
What the oyster does without the sand grain... !
No pearls.




Moving right along to try to get back on topic here...

rubaiyat, I've had a look but have not found any reference to your actual, de facto, real-world bandwidth... Sorry if I have missed it...
I only found the reference to 27kBs...
This leads me to suspect that you have a max of 'advertised' 256 kbps down...

Is this correct ?

Yes Ursula.

I am on a 256kps VDSL (a more efficient version of ADSL) broadband connection.

Other details:

Mac OSX 10.3.2 or 10.2.8 (as my mood takes me s:-)

Computer Mac G4 400Mhz AGP with multiple harddrives (5 at last count) 1.25Gb RAM

I am a Scorpio with my house rising in Venus. Lucky stone is Mick, favorite color green. I like to pretend I undertand US Foreign Policy and sincerely wished the US Government did also. I like a schooner of Pina Colado before my evening walks watching sunsets and am extremely worried at the fate of small innocent kittens in the hands of gun toting forum moderators...

I knew you were nuts !

:p