Shareaza

Windows XP SP2 limits the outgoing TCP connection to 10 in one second.

1. how does this affect Shareaza's download speed? How does this affect the number of download source of a particular file?

2. how does this affect Shareaza's upload speed? How does this affect the number of upload peers of a particular file?

3. If that affects download and upload speed, then how would applying the EvID4226Patch from "www.lvllord.de" help downloading or uploading?

4. Is applying this patch safe and secure for personal use? Some virus scanners say this patch is some form of malware!

Thank you for your informative advice

TCP connection limit has no effect on Shareaza DL and UL speed.

also, there shouldn't be any substantial difference between standard and higher limits when it comes to the time it takes for downloads to pick up speed if your Shareaza is configured well. The limit doesn't limit you to 10 simultaneous download sources either, since connections to those are not half-open when downloading.
There is, however, some negative effects that may be caused by increasing the number of half-open connections and actually taking advantage of it. the limit was instated for basically 2 reasons, one being to slow down the spreading speed of worms, but the one that really matters in our case is that too many half-open connections screws with your computer. most people use mainboard-integrated ethernet network adapters or other solutions that don't feature a dedicated processing unit thus being limited in performance and letting the main processor do all the work.
even if you manage to get reasonable performance with highly increased limits on your core i7 or so, you'll most likely run into problems further down the pipe. first stop would be your consumer modem/router which will react to the load of connections/connection attempts in either (or both) of the following ways: block any new connection attempts if a certain limit is reached or crash.
to make a long story short, unless you're running Windows Server (with optimized networking capabilites; doesn't need patching) on server hardware (especially Intel PRO ethernet controllers), don't mess with those limits.
that being said, the patch itself is fine and malware-free should you still need to use it.

yes and no... 99,9% of the hardware around has no problems dealing with much more than 100 half open connections under WinXP. However, if you don't have the patch, this possibility will never be used and like this, in some situations, Shareaza may not be as fast as it could be when establishing new connections (especially when there is a need for much connections in a short interval, such as while the initial connection process).