download speeds

[dmamusic]

hello every one
ive been using limewire for bout 2 months now and i think its pretty sweet,thaugh i am a little confused about how the speed of downloads work.
i have a dialup connection @ 56kps but i only evr get 5kps and below downloads speeds....i am going to get 1500kps broadband soon and am wondering if its gonna act in the same way?
will i get 1500kps downloads or much less?
i am using 4.6 on 10.3.3panther
thanx in advance for youre replies






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[Lord of the Rings]

You'll definitely get a much greater upld & dwnld bandwidth!! But refer to this following thread.

[murasame]

If you currently have a 56Kbps connection (notice the 'b') then your max dld speed should theoretically be 7KBps: remember the bit-to-Byte difference as 8kbps equal 1kBps. It had me fooled for a while.
With a 1500Kbps connection your max dld speed should be around 187KBps (it's fast. Believe me.). Of course getting it up to there is a totaly different matter as there are many factors to be considered: if you'll get DSL, then the distance between you and the server will affect connection speeds. You must also consider that some of your bandwidth is used to send/recieve signals and info to and from the Gnutella net (or something like that), so that's very probably why you haven't seen 7KBps but 5KBps so far (with the 56 connection).
If after changing the connection you still get relatively slow speeds then I'm sure it will be because your LW is not configured for optimal performance: before configuring it myself, I had speeds of around 15 to 20KBps on a DSL 1024kbps (=128KBps). Now I have already seen LW reaching max speed (around 125KBps).
You must also consider that you will not always get those speeds.

[danskimanuk]

Hi all...

I also have just downloaded limewire basic and am using it over a 600kbps broadband service. This means that when dowloading from other machines with a similar or greater bandwidth I should be hitting a maximum speed of 70KBps. This is not the case, however with my top dl speed being 12KB. Am I missing something here???????


Can anyone outline the key points in order to get the best performance out of limewire (i.e. best configuration)?
And explain why I could be getting such low download speeds (apart from physical distance from server)?

Cheers

[murasame]

Uh, that is for upload/dld success but not speed.
To configure the speed you have to go to Tools->Options (Limewire->Preferences for Mac) and fiddle with the settings there.

Try these:
-Check what your Upload speed is (what your Maximum upload bandwidth is) and go to Uploads->Basic. Decrease the meter to about 5 to 7 of your max upload bandwidth, so that, if your bandwidth was around 30KBps (remember, we are talking in KBps, not Kbps) you should set that to around 25KBps (my own settings).
-In Uploads->Slots decrease the number of available slots a little since 20 connections (I think this is the default) are too many.
-In Downloads, the default number of simultaneous dlds is, if my memory serves me right, 3. Often misleading, this setting does not affect the number of different downloads you can have active, but rather the amount of connections to different hosts for downloading you can get. This means that if this number is set to, say 10 and you click a file to download hosted by 20 hosts, then LW will try to dld the file from as many as 10 hosts (you will never connect to as many even if LW says that it is connected to, like 7 or 8 users, since Basic is limited to 4 connections per download I think). If then you try to download at the same time two files hosted by more than 5 hosts, then LW will try to connect to 5 hosts for the first dld and to another 5 for the second. The number of possible connections for a single download decreases depending on the number set as the maximum number of simultaneous dlds and the number of active downloads.
You must increase this number a little at a time: increase it by, say, +2 and try dlding a popular file.
If speed is increased, then try increasing it another 1 or 2. You should take care though since increasing this number too much will end up consuming bandwidth (LW will try connecting to more hosts than your bandwidth cn handle) resulting in slower speeds. This means that setting this number directly to 50 or 100 will very, very, very likely have the opposite effect.

While fine-tuning your LW, remember that Uploads also affect your download speed so decreasing upload effectiveness will have a bad effect on dlds.
Hope this all helps and if I remember anything else I'll post again.

[danskimanuk]

Thanks for the tips murasame!

Have tried the suggestions outlined but am still getting no improvements (from what is allegedly a 600kbps/70KBps maximum bandwidth service). My average download rate is only 5KB from other cable/DSL and higher bandwidth sources????????

Do you or anyone else out there know a Unix command that i can use in a terminal to find out my maximum downstream and upstream bandwidth???


I really would like to check that its not my basic net set-up that is giving me such disappointing performance, before I go cursing Limewire and pulling my hair out....

please help!!!!!

[murasame]

There was a site that you could go to to calculate your bandwidths but I forget where it is. Hopefully someone will see this and post a link to it.
Also, you must consider the fact that some ISP have p2p traffic controling, meaning that they can regulate speeds that come from p2p filesharing. Call your ISP and find out.