WinMX Netiquette TIPS! #1)PING - PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE use the PING options on your searches. THEY ARE THERE FOR A REASON! Do not bother people who show a (?) or a ping over 300. 90% of the time your transfer rate will be agonizingly slow. Pick people with pings under 100 whenever possible. #2)QUEUED - Dont stay in a persons queue day after day, or even hour after hour. Ask if they want to trade and if you dont get a response within 5 minutes or so, move on. Most people with alot in the queue obviously have alot to offer, and are being OFFERED files as well. Most of them have experience and take the time to browse those in their list. If you have nothing they want, you will never start, so move on. If you have something they want, they will have either started you and entered your queue or sent you a message. #3)SHARING - If you have nothing to offer at all, either because you dont care to share, you have no hard drive space or dont want to use up bandwidth by uploading, then GOOD LUCK TO YOU! That gets you on a IGNORE list very fast, especially if you are trying to get a large movie file. Those just starting out can find this VERY frustrating. My advice to you is to get many files going (even if you dont want them) as fast as you possibly can. Do searches for any of the latest popular movies and/or music and keep them for trade bait. Theres alot of users so you can always find something if you try. Then, once you have stuff that others need getting what you want comes much easier. Also, alot of people just use the "whois" button, which doesnt show what you are offering it only shows the number of files you have available. So make SOMETHING, ...*ANYTHING* available so that when people use "whois" it wont show a goose egg. It is also better to share the same types of files you are looking for....most people share only Music Files and Music Videos which don't usually interest those that have plenty of MPG and JPG files shared. No matter how many MP3's you have shared you will probably not be moved ahead of the Que when you are trying to get the latest AVI file, at least not as fast as when you have similar material for the person you are trying to download from. #4)BE NICE - Calling someone a asshole or constantly sending messages saying "START ME NOW!!" in all caps will not get you the file any faster. It gets you, once again, on the IGNORE list. Asking nicely or explaining that you need to resume a file and are almost finished can sometimes get you in. #5)BROWSE - When you are trying to get a small music file, and end up queued#, browse that person to see if they have alot of large movie files. Movies take a LONG time. Being queued 1 when the person ahead of you is getting a movie is the same as being queued 30, you will wait for eternity. Also, IF they have a file named: TRADES Only on Files over 4megs.txt that is probably a message to Those that don't share....if they let you download a file feel very priviledged....otherwise share something that they may want. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 100+K/Sec TIPS Will increase bandwidth for Dial-Up, DSL, Cable, T1, T3 and any connection speed. Click the SETTINGS button then go to BANDWIDTH THROTTLE. Place a check in both boxes. Set download bandwidth to 100000000 bytes per second. (100 million) Set upload bandwidth to 50000000 bytes per second. (50 million) Double check to make sure you have the correct amount of 0s. For WinMX 2.6 users: Set your Bandwidth Throttle Cycle to 50ms. This give WinMX more CPU Time and increases transfer speeds. It will hinder you while using other applications at the same time unless you have a fast PC with lots of RAM. (Haven't found this all that effective at increasing speed. Maybe that's why its not in 3.x) Click CLOSE. You will NOT need to restart WinMX to see this improvement at work. For some reason those exact numbers increase your speed more than other numbers, even higher numbers dont work as well. If we can get everyone to do this, we will all be cranking right along at high speeds. You can DL/UL off people with LOW PINGS in the 100+k/sec area now. I have seen downloads on my DSL as high as 100k/s with two or more uploads totaling in the 30k/s range. Before this 40k/s downloads and 20k/s uploads were the MAX. and very far between. This Just In: 163k/s on a 9.1meg MP3 from a T1 source in less than 60sec. WOW! News Flash: 170k/s on an 11 meg file from someone claiming to have DSL...Must be SuperDSL. Maximum Speeds you can Expect(In Our Dreams): DSL: 1.5mbit down 256Kbit up ..... roughly 187KByte/Sec Down and 32KByte/Sec Up Cable: 1.5mbit down 512Kbit up ..... 187KByte/Sec Down and 64KByte/Sec Up ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tweak for Fewer Time Outs: If possible (you're not behind a firewall that blocks it and have no way of opening the port) use the Listen on Port XXXX for incoming TCP connections in Settings, Connection, Firewall/Network Settings. This will greatly reduce the number of Lost Connetion and TimeOuts waiting for incoming connection. This of course all depends on what the other user has set. If everyone has these setting we probably will not see Timeouts again. If you use Zone Alarm it will show two MX Icons in the programs area, the one you see when using WinMX and the other if you move your pointer over it will say something like Listening on port XXXX. Hope it works for you as well as it has for me and many others.