Monitor Page

Overview

The Monitor Page shows you all of the files you are sharing along with their popularity and rank when being considered for search results. This page also lets you see what other people are searching for. You can view the status of your shared files here.

Appearance

Shared Files List

This list displays all of the files you are sharing. Right clicking in the list brings up the Shared Files menu.

Files that have been successfully uploaded are drawn in green. Files that have been requested at least once are drawn in blue. Files that matched incoming searches are drawn in black, and those that have never been matched are dimmed. A file which was shared and is no longer available is drawn in red. Files become unavailable when you remove a shared directory containing shared files, when you remove an extension from the list of shared file types for files you are sharing, when a shared file is moved or deleted from its shared folder, or when you rename shared files. The columns are:

Dir This is the directory containing the shared file.
File Name

The name of the file without the directory component.

Uploads This is the number of times the file was successfully uploaded.
Requests This is the number of times the file was requested for upload. Web browsers typically request a file a few times to get meta information before making the actual upload request. Requests are counted even if the transfer failed or didn't take place.
Hits This is the number of times the file was returned as a search result.

The number of times a file has been successfully uploaded, requested for uploading, or returned as a search result is displayed in the respective column.

When the Watch shared directories option is turned on in the Sharing Setup page, BearShare will monitor the shared directories for changes to the files. BearShare knows when files are added, deleted, moved, renamed, or changed in size. This monitoring process works even if the shared files are located on a network drive, or if the files are manipulated outside of BearShare (for example, in the Windows Explorer).

This monitoring feature allows you to share your Downloads directory. In this way, files that you download are immediately made available as shared files when they are completed.

BearShare remembers every file that it sees in a shared directory during a single run of the program. If the directory is removed from the list of shared directories, or the list of shared extension is changed, the files are still remembered, but they are drawn in red to indicate they are not shared. BearShare will not return these red files as search results. If the directory is re-added, the file returns to its normal status. When the program exits the red files will not appear on the next launch. Renaming a file causes both the old file and the new file to appear, with the old file drawn in red.

Removing a shared directory from the list does not affect uploads of files in the directory if they are already in progress.

When the Shared Files list is unsorted, the files are displayed in the order they are considered for as search results. If the Faster search results option is set in the Searching Setup page, files which are returned as search results will move up by one in the list. The most frequently returned files will move to the top. If the Better search results option is set, then the entire list will rotate as the FreePeers Agent cylcles through the shared files.

Shared Files Menu

The items in the shared files menu are:

Open Opens a single selected file using the program appropriate for the file type. You can also double click an item in the list to open it.
Explore Opens the directory the shared file using the Windows Explorer. This is a useful shortcut for managing your shared files.
Shuffle

Shuffles the order in which shared files are considered when matching incoming searches. This works the same was as shuffling a deck of cards. The FreePeers agent automatically shuffles the shared file list when the program is first launched, whenever directories containing shared files are changed, or whenever the list of shared extensions change.

You can use this menu item to manually trigger a shuffle of the shared files. This can be useful if the same files get returned over and over again and you want to return some different results for a little while.

The shuffling process, and the process by which shared files are activated and deactivated in the shared files list, does not affect the file index returned in search results to other users. This means that shuffling, adding, or removing directories or files, even if they are in your downloads directory, does not affect the ability for other users to download your files using the expected file index.

Search List

You can see what other people are looking for here. The minimum and maximum character controls can be changed to adjust the type of information displayed. The columns:

Search Text This is what keywords the user specified for their search. The search string is pre-processed before it is displayed, and represents what the FreePeers Agent 'sees' when considering matches.
Frequency The number of times the same search was encountered.

Pause

The display of searches will be paused when this box is checked. This does not pause the update of the shared file list. Note that analysis of searches consumes additional CPU resources. Therefore, the updating of the search list only happens when you are on the Monitor tab and the Pause button is not checked.

If you leave the program running with the Monitor tab displayed and you do not do anything for ten minutes, the search list will automatically pause itself and the box will become checked.

Character Count

By changing the numbers in these edit boxes, you can control the minimum and maximum number of characters in searches that are eligible for display in the search list. This does not affect the search results returned to other users, only their display in the list.

The most common type of search is three letters - just enough information to match a file extension. By setting the minimum and maximum both to three, you can see what kinds of files people are looking for.

To find out what people who are doing very specific searches are looking for, increase the minimum number of characters.

The searches that appear in the list only apply to searches that pass the rules for message validity and expiration. Additionally, the searches are 'canonicalized' before they are displayed. This means that all non alphanumeric characters are removed, and runs of white space are replaced with a single space. The entire string is then converted to lower case. These are the rules that most Gnutella based programs use when determining whether or not a shared file matches a search.

Most clients return a hit on a file if any one of the search keywords match the file. Therefore, a search string of the form "classical mp3" would return any .mp3 file, not just classical files. BearShare only returns files if all of the keywords in the search string match a portion of the file name.

Search Result Statistics

This area displays the rate at which your files are being returned to other users as search results, and the portion of your bandwidth that is being used only for returning search results. This bandwidth is not in addition to, but rather, part of the bandwidth displayed in the Hosts Page.

If you are sharing a large number of files and you place a big limit, or no limit, on the number of files returned in search results to other users searches, expect a large amount of bandwidth to be consumed rather quickly, as most Gnutella searches consist of file extensions only.

To counteract this problem, while allowing large limits on returned search results, you can change the minimum number of characters considered in searches to 4 or higher in the Setup.