. . .although there is almost certainly a statistical appraisal of each individual's quality of connection to Gnutella in terms of time spent connected, number of files shared and surplus bandwidth available, you miss the key point. My own experience with earlier versions of Limewire was that being an ultrapeer was a serious disadvantage in terms of general system performance. Now I freely admit that I have opted out of the default ultrapeer status since LW 2.9.9 and things may have improved since, but do not allow your social conscience to railroad you into ultrapeer mode until you are sure that the advantages outweigh the diadvantages.