Searching

Search Results

One of the biggest complaints heard about Gnutella today is the lack of responsiveness to searches. This lack of responsiveness is due to poor technical implementation in the existing Gnutella clients. There are a number of techniques where search results can be improved. BearShare provides active and passive searching modes to retrieve as many matching files as possible.

Searches

The type of search you perform will greatly affect your ability to get results. Searching for very general terms like 'mp3' will yield a large number of results. Searching for something very specific, like 'generals daughter" may take longer. It might take several minutes to locate something that matches.

Passive Searching

BearShare automatically scans all incoming search results to see if they match any of your active searches. This passive searching mode can return results long after the original active search was initiated. If you start a search for a very specific file and leave BearShare running for a while, this greatly improves your chances of locating the file.

Tips

Do not repeatedly search for the same thing over and over again using the multiple search feature. This will only cause more traffic on the network and decrease your chances of getting results.

If you have a slower connection, do not search for overly broad terms, like 'jpg'. This may cause you to receive more traffic than you can handle, and you will get dropped instead of getting results.