I've noticed a few times when I'm queued for a download, I'm sitting in position 1 and the software is counting down the seconds to "retry the connection." What happens next is that it says, "Connecting..." then "Host busy." This seems a bit like getting to the front of the queue for a really busy night club, then getting out of the queue to walk away somewhere and ask a bouncer if you can get in, only to be told "queue up like everyone else." You almost invariably lose your place in the queue and, if the host is busy enough, you lose your chance to connect at all. Is this auto-retry an essential component to the network's operation, or can Phex be made to just quietly assume that it'll get to download the file when the host is ready?

The host you are talking to is deciding where you are in the queue and if you are allowed to download. The host should hold the connection and you in queue until its time to download then it should be your turn. But apparently it throws you out of queue, maybe because of a communication problem? I don't know. Is it always one specific vendor/version where this happens?

About the spamming... Its very difficult to detect this kind of spamming. Phex already uses various filter method to detect and block spam messages. The problem here is that the spam is most likely not coming from the IP displayed but is just routed through that host... Currently we have no method to block this kind of spam.

BTW, would you like to try to use the Phex release posted here:
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/360345-post5.html

Gregor

__________________

It's more of a general thing, as far as I can see. I used a paid app years ago, I think it was called eTomi Pro, where I saw the same thing happening from the other side - certain addresses queued to download from me would disappear for a split second at a predictable interval and then re-appear at the back of the queue. I don't think that one displayed software vendor, though, it's been a long time. But when I started seeing Phex counting down then re-connecting in exactly that manner, I watched it for a while and it happens with every file I'm queued to download.

Always an issue... of course, me being me, I didn't like to just ban a host based on searches, so I browsed them before banning and all five of them were sharing the same spam files. At that point, any concern I had about blocking legitimate hosts went straight out the window. It looks like at least some of them aren't intelligent enough to IP-spoof when they spam.

Ooh... I kept meaning to look for updates, actually. Thanks.

Wow. Spam much? The asshat even inserted dren into a quote of my post...