With a BearShare ultrapeer population of only about 20, I find it a little pointless continuing with the updated connection installers. To my knowledge, BearShare reserves 18 connection slots for BearShare peers out of a total of 26. I doubt I've ever connected to more than 15 BearShare peers at any time.

About 3/4 the peer population have dynamic addresses. And over half the peer population use the BS 5.1 Beta & are firewalled because they're too lazy to port forward their routers (BS 5.1 beta 'requires' port-forwarding.) A TCP firewalled ultrapeer is very damaging to the network. Because the BearShare peer population is so small, I feel obligated to include these firewalled peers on the connection file despite no other program including BearShare does this.

I spend much of my time arranging the non-BearShare connection hosts. But this seems almost totally irrelevant because BearShare concentrates upon finding hosts via GWeb sites. Hosts from the connection file are given very low priority.
As for the BearShare hosts on the connection list, many stay there in hope they might return 'lol'. Because otherwise the host size would only be about 20 hosts.

It's not only the very small & always changing BearShare peer population that's disappointing, but probably much more-so all those hosts who are firewalled ultrapeers. That just makes me feel ill and want to walk away. "!" "."

I realise the connection list is not only for ultrapeers, but also for leafs.

There seems no lack of BearShare leafs, in fact I've spent many a long session (4+ days) trying to help out catering for their needs to connect to at least some BearShare ultrapeers. BearShare's 38 reserved leaf slots for BearShare leafs out of 45 are always filled rather quickly whether I run one or even four BearShares. BearShare v.4 apparently would only connect to other BearShare hosts. There just isn't enough BearShare ultrapeers now, nor is there enough good ones who are not firewalled & blocking everyone's search messages.

Time for me to move on. Perhaps someone else might volunteer a connection list periodically if you care for their community.

(I have a very high respect for those BearShare ultrapeers who are relatively long timers & are not firewalled. I love your dedication!)