Turbocharged to Poor in secs!
 

Greetings,

Searched the forums, have only found some vaguely similar probs, but not exact. Have been using LW on my G4 PB for 9 month with no major probs until now. Never had too post B4 so apologies if I ramble on before I ask my Q.

I only seem to be getting a stable connection at certain times of the day. If I connect between 02:00 - 15:00(GMT), I am Turbocharged and able to get resonably fast DL speeds. But if I connect or am still connected outside of these hours the quality bar seems to go a bit "Schizophrenic". The bar drops down to 1 for a few secs saying poor and then shoots back up to Excellent/Turbocharged for a while and then once again it drops. When I check the Monitor, I can see Ultrapeers droping out and new ones connecting rapidly. This activity coincides with my bars fluctuating, T'charged with 5 Ultrapeers connected and Poor with only 1 or 2 U'peers on.
This is all very nu and weird to me. Before this month LW seemed to work quite well at anytime of the day, better speeds at night etc, but never this unstable. So my question "Is this a problem on my end, that I can resolve (ISPblocking,prefs,ports etc.) or are others having this problem too?"

Info:
OS X 10.3.9
Nortons Personal FW
512 MB RAM
40 Gb
1 MB Broadband (TalkTalk)
Netgear DG834G
Home
LW Pro 4.8.1(if it ain't broke...) Java 1.4.2.09

Hope someone can help me out.
Cheers,
W'n'P333

Hello tolstoy ;)

When LW has been inactive for a while (as far as searches are concerned), the extra ultrapeers are dropped since they aren't needed for file transfers. One UP is used to keep you connected to the network.

As soon as it looks like you are going to need a search, the extra ultrapeers are added in preparation.

So, when you've been away from the screen for a bit, you'll notice the connection quality coming back up to full readiness.

That's one explanation of what you may be seeing.

As far as times of the day, the network does fluctuate. See here for details http://www.limewire.com/english/content/netsize.shtml

Another real possibility is that your ISP automatically controls p2p packets (bandwidth shaping) at peak times. You'll have to dig at their help desk to get a straight answer to that question ;)

Cheers

Thanks for the feedback Stief.

Just really wanted to know if there was anything I could do to improve the situation on my end, guess not.
Gonna have to address the "Bandwidth Shaping" with the Boys' & Girls' @ my ISP, wish me luck. :(

Will pass on your salutations to old Leo next time I see him;)

Kind Regards,
W'n'P333

W'n'P, unless your file transfers are really off the usual pace, I don't think you have to do anything.

The "connection quality" really only refers to searches. File transfers in progress aren't affected, and as you know, transfers vary wildly depending on the suppliers.

Cheers

Once again thanks Stief.:)

Take it easy now,
W'n'P333