Shareaza

I have 2 problems trying to download from emule users.

First is I get bumped downwards on the user's queue list. I run shareaza nonstop and frequently reach Q#1 on particular emule users. Viewing my Transfers some time later I find that nothing or just a miniscule amount has been downloaded from that user, and my queue position there has dropped, often into the hundreds or even thousands.

Second is that actual download speeds from these emule users is minute, invariably < 5 Kb/s and often < 1 Kb/s, so that some downloads go on for weeks on end without completing.

Meanwhile emule users are happily uploading plenty of files from my library. What's going on?

Do you pass the connection test? (See the "Help" menu.)

No, I don't pass the connection test, there's a router in the way that I cannot alter. But that's not relevant in this situation, because this would affect both uploads and downloads. My concern is that downloads, specifically and only from emule users, are being additionally hindered, but uploads to emule users are not.

It seems you have two symptoms of the same problem with connecting to eMule users. Your first problem (being bumped) is probably caused by eMule responding to your second problem (insufficient download speed).

OK then, I'll answer my own question with an example.

For rather more than a month I've been downloading Brahms 1st Symphony with Shareaza. The only sources for the entire work were Emule users. I had got 24 of the 105 MB in the file.

Last night I installed Emule. As a newbie I'm sure I don't rate very high in its ranking system, so it wasn't doing me any favors, but I did a hell of a lot better than as a Shareaza user. Within 6 hours I had the entire 105 MB, plus 83% of a different version of similar size.

Its plainly apparent to me that the unscrupulous folks at Emule are busily intent on relegating other p2p apps to the position traditionally occupied by nice guys, and they're succeeding.. That's a shame, I really like Shareaza and despise Emule for that. But my main interest is downloading files, so I've jumped ship, and far from the first to do so.

I'm not sure but does eMule support NAT traversal?

I'd suspect a bug in download throttling instead. Transfer speed throttling has always been bit iffy in Shareaza as I recall and the problems I saw with BitTorrent are similar enough to suggest a shared cause. It might also be caused by ISP filtering the protocol at the sources end. eMule supports obfuscation and might get thru (making the filtering totally useless...), Shareaza doesn't.

I don't know what NAT traversal or download throttling are, but the latter sounds suggestively like what was being done.

One's download speed usually would be controlled by the sender's upload speed, and I had no complaint about my download speeds from Shareaza, Gnutella or Limewire, only from Emule. One time I watched for several minutes while I had just one upload and one download going,, each with a different Emule user. My download was hovering around 200 BITS per second, the upload steaming away at 22 KB/s.

Now that I am using Emule, my download speeds are reasonable from all sources, but I still get bumped down the queue by favored users. With Emule you really can't tell what software someone is using unless its an Emuler who uses the default user name, because it doesn't identify it. The uploads are more informative, for each upload it shows the transfer speed and the length of time that user had to wait before getting access to your files, i.e. how long they were on queue. Markedly, high upload speeds go with short waits; and the longest waits correspond with transfer speeds < 1 Kb/s, which invariably cancel the transfer in short order.

The program's documentation frankly states that favored users get priority access (hence my experiences of being bumped down the queue after being first in line), and provides the formulas by which it calculates this rating. But nowhere does it mention that transfer speed is similarly doctored. I think Emule has a lot in common with chain letters or Ponzi schemes, in that the earlier you "bought" into it, the better it performs for you.