File grouping

I would love to see better file grouping for multiple downloads.
At this time I find that the identical file (same file name & size)may appear available on several separate hosts.
To dl from all these hosts, one gets a multiple copy of the same file at different dl speeds.
I'm talking about how WinMX handles this and also seems to employ some type of fuzzy logic whereby similar filenames are grouped together - provided their filesize is the same.

[sberlin]

LimeWire already matches files together if they're the same. LimeWire's definition of 'same', though, is 'exactly the same'. Replies transmit information that's not displayed to the user about the hash of the file -- that hash is used to group flies together. It's often possible that a file can have the same name & size, but a different hash. LimeWire won't group those together, because it'll cause corruption during the download.

[Lord of the Rings]

Pity. It's one of the things I hoped might be overcome eventually (with further improvement to Java & the Gnutella network.) Also the option of choosing which source to dwnld from, which was certainly an option in LW2 (ie: within each group, you could choose to dwnld from the grp as a whole or one particular source.) Sometimes items are grouped, yet one/two might have slightly different names. Also experience dwnlding from one particular source may have had problems, so the idea of choosing your specific source within a grp could be quite beneficial.

[sberlin]

There is no benefit to downloading from a single host in the group, nor is there a benefit in grouping files that are known to be different in the same group. LimeWire is doing you a favor by forcing you in these regards. If any 'fuzzy matching' was employed to group results together, there'd be far more corruptions on the network (and not just on your download -- on other people's downloads who are downloading from you). Forcing you to make use of other sources also helps the network, because it keeps the bandwidth requirements distributed among multiple people.

[Nonya Biz]

sberlin,

I don't care so much about forcing a download from a particular user, but not being able to separate grouped results limits my ability to use the browse host option to find content I did not know about. I am forced to use an old version of LimeWire (one with the grouped checkbox) so I can find new files.

For example, I run a search for video files with "iraq" as the keyword and get back a bunch of hits, many of which are grouped. With the old LimeWire, I can ungroup and browse the hosts and often I find a lot of content I was unaware existed. I'd say I've found half my mpegs this way. The direct connect feature somewhat addresses the issue, but I would have to manually type in the IP address. What a pain!

It would be very helpful if you would allow to ungroup, even if you forced me to swarm download. I don't care about where it (the file) comes from, I just want to find those little jewels I didn't know were there until I browsed them on some host computer.

Thanks,
Nonya

[Lord of the Rings]

here here ... excellent point! The same has been true for myself. But since I upgraded from LW2 to v.4 a few mths ago, this has not been quite so possible/easy.
Also you didn't quite give an explanations as to why:

Sometimes items are grouped, yet one/two might have slightly different names.

[sberlin]

Good points. We'll likely add something that lets you browse the sub-files of a group. How we'll do this, though, isn't too clear. Ungrouping as it used to be probably won't return.

[Nonya Biz]

Would it really be that hard? The IP addresses pop up when you hover over a grouped (multiple) search result. I just want to be able to right click on a host and browse like I could with the older versions.

[sberlin]

Nah, it's not that hard. There's just lots and lots and lots of other things that need to be done before this version is released, and we're kinda pressed for time. You're right -- a good (and relatively easy) option would be to have 'Browse Host' offer an option of the various hosts via a sub-menu, so you could browse one directly.

[Nonya Biz]

Originally posted by Nonya Biz
Would it really be that hard?

Please excuse the stupidity...I have NO idea how hard it would be. I'm just thinking of perhaps the ability to ungroup like before without the ability to force download from a particular host.