What Does "NEEDS MORE SOURCES" Really Mean?
 

I'd been hunting for one particular file for months and I finally found it Wednesday night. But I was not able to download it. I got the "Need More Sources" notice. I've always taken that to mean the host disconnected from the net and perhaps there was some index cache held at an ultrapeer. So I gave up.

Last night I found the file again... got up to 17%, then the download rate fell to zero, got the Busy Host notice, then Need More Sources. Since I was browsing the host, I tried downloading another file... a single source file. It started. WTF! The host obviously was still connected to the internet. I canceled both and started my target file again. It picked up at the 17% then stopped ay 31%. I did battle like this for about 90 minutes. It was like battling a prized game fish... but I finally got the entire file. Which raises the bigger question... what does Need More Sources REALLY mean if it doesn't mean a host is disconnected from the net? Where there is a poor connection there has to be some time based formula for LW to display these messages... first drop the time left number, then drop the download rate from 0K to Busy host... then to Needs More Sources.

Nice description of the problem; especially the fish-fight analogy :)

Needs More Sources means that the known and reported sources have been tried and haven't responded, so another search is needed.

However, the reasons an online host hasn't responded can really vary, as you saw. Maybe it is busy, the owner cancelled an upload, the host is using a buggy implementation of the code, or in the case of a firewalled host, the intermediary relays have gone offline.

If my understanding of reading the developers remarks is correct, improved searching and getting of rare content is in the works, so I'm hoping there'll be less babysitting of rare downloads.

This is something I hope can be improved on LW. My approach for doing a search for those rare files is if nothing comes up, to delete all my ultrapeers and do the search again and again. At times I've run both Frostwire and Limewire giving me access to 9 ultrapeers at a time. I’m not sure there’s any advantage to that though.

Which brings up a question you might be able to answer. I'm sharing some 1200 files and I'm wondering whether it's a good idea to not make them available when I'm shopping for ultrapeers. I'm not sure they hold in cache an index of all the files from all the leaves... and if I move on, it will mess up the searches of other users... or put stress on the network.

Also... speaking of searches... just how many hops does a ultrapeer pass a request on to? Just what's happening when I request "search for more sources" and it counts down from 300? And just what is Out Of Band searching?

Thanks!

Was it as satisfying as game fishing? Will you mount the file on your wall for all to see? ;)

This URL might be helpful to you ZombieGak;

http://www.limewire.org/wiki/index.p...sked_Questions

In the right hand column, beneath Contents, if you click 2.3 Searching - under the Answers subtitle, there is information on 'Needs more sources', 'Awaiting sources' and many other topics.
However I was not able to locate information on OOB - maybe I need glasses?
Stief, if you do know what OOB is, or where to find the information, can you please post it here?

Thank you.

Cheers :-)

Sorry, the URL did not turn out correctly will try again:

http://www.limewire.org/wiki/index.p...sked_Questions

If this listing of the URL does not display in full, again, you are able to access the information from LW directly under the Help> FAQ option in the top tool bar.

Cheers :-)

Oops, my bad, the URL link does work, even though the full address is not displayed.
Learn something new everyday! ;)