Everytime I try downloading from someone behind a firewall it never connects and the push never gets answered. What is even the point of this feature?

That's a good question, it's never worked once for me either. I don't even bother trying to download from people behind firewalls anymore it's just a waste of time.

I hope the a future version lets us exclude people from uploading who are behind firewalls, they're no better than any other leeches.

Exqueeeze me, but I'm behind a firewall, and I've had lots of successful uploads to other people.

I share my files just as much as any other guy here. But it may depend on how the firewall is set up.

If you have a permanent connection like T1, ADSL, cable or whatever, it's just stupid not to have a firewall. I won't stop using it.

That's my opinion anyway.

I can occasionally see in my 'Uploads' sections a "push failed" message followed by a completed transfer from the same IP address, which tells me that the stuff does go through occasionally.

I actually have very good sucess with this as long as you understand its limits. A few points about push:

First, if you're *also* behind a firewall (or are attempting to spoof it by placing a fake IP in the "force IP" box) it will *never* work. Two firewalled hosts can't connect to each other.

Second, only try ones marked as "Available" since push routes expire quickly and can't be retried like a normal connection (you can - it just won't help).

Third, don't waste time - every second you wait to download a push item the chances of sucess are less. If you wait for a large result list to fill up before downloading the push routes will all be dead already.

What's a push route? Well, for a push to work the a message must be sent back through the exact *same* chain of Gnutella peers that originally sent you the search result. Connections come and go quickly and once this chain breaks the push will not work. Also peers will only remember the most recent push routes. Wait too long and the info on how to find the original server is gone from some links in the chain.