Clients do not propagate their connection speed when downloading, so that could be quite hard to implement. Downloading about 6Gigs shouldn't be any problem, though.

As for your bandwidth usage, how many Ultrapeer connections are you generally keeping???

I'd love it if there was a way to ask someone to share a file you know is out there, but not shared at the moment...

That is not possible with gnutella. ICQ or another IM generally helps you out. - It is possible, though, to chat with a host you want to download from.

i keep 5 or 6 which is my max

I'm using LimeWire 2.3.2 Pro and I like to rearrange the order and size of the display columns in the Search and Download windows. For example, I move Chat as far off the screen as possible since its wasted space.

This is great for as long as that LimeWire session lasts, but LimeWire doesn't save those changes, so I have to do it again the next time I start it up.

Could it save this information?

it should be saving that info for the search results tab, but the information for the other tabs aren't saved yet.

Maybe you've already implemented this, but I'm using 2.3.3 and I haven't found it. Anyways, here's the idea: automated search and download. Essentially, you put in some parameters (file\artist name, format, bitrate, etc.), and it would continue looking\regular search (say every 3 minutes) for the file and automatically download it even if the file could not initially be found on the network.

For example: I'm looking for Joe Unknown - Obscure Track.mp3. After doing a quick search manually, nothing shows up on the network. So I put in the artist name, format, and minimum bitrate into an automated search and download, then go watch tv for a few hours. About an hour after I leave, Jane Doe comes online and happens to be sharing that file. The automated search and download takes another poll, finds it, and downloads it. I come back in another hour and look at the screen showing my track automagickly downloaded with a big dumb grin on my face and put on my headphones. (-8

This could also have the side effect of encouraging people to stay on the network longer, which would mean more files being shared...

Just an idea.

Automated searches every three minutes, - even sending queries every 30 minutes causes very high traffic.

LimeWire has currently implemented (only in cvs) a downloader robot, that will let you specify a search and start requerying the network for the search keywors (not quite every 3 minutes, but it does requery...). When it receives a result, it will try downloading it automatically.

what about requeries for original parameters [including whether audio/video/program/etc] ?

That's currently not supported by any other client. - When searching for hashes, you could probably reduce the requery interval to 15 minutes or so.