The Gnutella Protocol specifies a small set of messages which are passed from computer
to computer. These messages can contain user searches, and the results of their searches.
Hosts can appear and disappear from the network at any time. The disappearance of any
one particular host does not affect the network, or your ability to search for files. In
this sense it is fault tolerant.
BearShare maintains a certain number of host connections automatically, based on the
settings you specify. With an increasing number of connections comes a larger amount of
traffic. More connections also means more outgoing traffic to each of the hosts you
are connected to, as well as additional CPU and memory requirements.
A problem arises when a host receives information faster than it can handle, or when a host
attempts to send information to another host more quickly than the receiving host can
accept it. Data can become accumulated by the sender, and as a result, hosts will see that
responses to their messages take longer and longer. Eventually, hosts may stop receiving
results altogether. This is called a bandwidth barrier
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