The number of files available varies widely depending on the general health of the network, and how many hosts you are connected to. It will go up and down during the day. I've noticed the longer I leave Limewire running, the more hosts/files become available. The network seems to become smaller on weekends--due to fewer machines staying in the network or so I've read. I usually will perform the same search several times to get the best variety of potential files for download.

As for my connections, they say that any host that has a large percentage of dropped messages should be removed. I usuallly check my connections and remove ones that are 75-100% dropped messages on a consistent basis. I always remove a Gnuecleus host--it drags down the system and does nothing for me.