Resuming with Lime: How does it actually work ?
 

Since version 1.3 of LimeWire Lime Peers claim that "The Resume feature works 'across hosts', so that you can resume an interrupted download from any host who has the file you were downloading." I am a true fan of LimeWire and I consider it the best Gnutella Servent out there, but I have never - and I mean NEVER - been able to actually resume a file. How does it work ? When a download is broken, there is no attempt made of Lime to research for that file automatically. Pushing the "Force Resume" button does only result in a try to reconnect to the very host that you have just lost, which usually has no effect at all. How do I resume a file from a different host ? It seems to me that this feature is not implemented at all, and you (Lime Peers) know exactly that File Resuming is the one and only reason why so many Gnutella Users still prefer Bearshare. If I should be wrong about the state of this feature please tell me how it is done, cause i have no idea and your help pages do not comment on this topic except at the explanation of "Force Resume".
Please explain it to me.

Before you go with BearShare you might want to give Gnotella and Gnucleus a try too.

Gnotella main fault is it's tendency to slow down when sharing many files - otherwise it's pretty good. Still no resume from alternate hosts - though the normal resume works better than LimeWire.

Gnucleus has improved quite a bit recently (the guy puts out a new version almost weekly). It groups like LimeWire and *does* re-search and restart from different hosts quite well. It's also very fast. One problem is its seems to have a problem downloading from some (but not all) firewalled hosts (those needing a push). Often it'll fail on hosts Gnotella has no problem with.

I concur! Having never used BearShare (it's the spyware, ya see) I can't compare LimeWire, but right now the whole resume-download thing seems pretty shaky. The "downloads.dat" file is a start, but I've noticed it "remembers" some files and forgets others, so it's kinda useless. There's a bug in LimeWire which creates "Incomplete" directories everywhere- in the LimeWire folder, on the root level of the HD, one folder above the download folder, and of course, one in the download folder. It uses the "wrong" Incomplete folder upon relaunch, and thus uses its (nonexistent or wrong) downloads.dat file. They need to address this bug and generally make file resumes more robust. I was able to resume a download by renaming the file (the "N#" prefix) but it's a kludge.

In three words: it doesn´t. Have you seen any response to my threads related to this same issue? None at all. that gives you an idea about how interested they are in our "beta-testing" of their proggy. I say so ´cos the very first option of a program of this nature is a resume option and, guess what? it simply isn´t there. I´m planning to switch to Bearshare as soon as I have a minute to look at it, I have read in its forum that it resumes marvellously.

[This message has been edited by bastioned (edited 05-20-2001).]