Morgwen,
I believe the biggest problem is with people not sharing any files not people disconnecting from the net.

Again I am speaking about modem users. But what good are they? At best they offer a 33k upload speed and that is assuming a perfect connection. I don't even bother trying to D/L from someone with less than a 100k connection. Now if we were using Gnutella to trade simple txt files well then your statements would be true, but since most of us are trading files that are many Meg or even several Gig in size dial up connections are only good for the person who owns it.

Also you ask me to never disconnect from the net? Now I am willing to bet most users of Gnutella don't leave their comp on 24/7 so how is this any different than a modem user disconnecting when he/she D/L?

One more point, I use Gnotella and even when I am not connected to any hosts (disconnected from the network) I still have people uploading from me. When someone is uploading I am connected to their hosts, according to the stats tab in Gnotella. So can't people still search me? Also by disconnecting from the net and still letting people upload am I not clearing the "que" that is out there for my files? Hell that was two points