completion priority
 

the way things work now, a file can be shared by n downloaders, each using 1 nth portion of the server's *upload* bandwidth. for example, on a 3mb broadband connection with 700kb upload speed, 10 downloaders would each get 70 kilobits (7 kilobytes/sec as reported by limewire).

this sucks!

why? for any reasonably large files (try 350mb tv shows), this results in stupidly long download times (days) for everybody. the chances that the file, or even the server, will stay online until they all complete is virtually zero, and so people are left with incomplete files. (i've had files sit at 90% or more complete for a month or two.)

a much better strategy is to allow fewer simultaneous downloaders, and somewhat longer queues (but they'll move faster). that will get more downloads finished, and fewer incomplete files sitting on people's drives.

this can be done by individuals on their own machines, but it would be far better to just change the default settings all at the same time. one change might be a new setting for the minimum bandwidth per download connection - maybe something like 15 or 20 kbytes/sec. or a more sophisticated version might be a target transfer time (say 3-200 minutes), which would increase bandwidth automatically for large files, and allow more connections on smaller files.