FAQ - MOST COMMON PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS (by Seli)

[balubeto]

Every time I start Shareaza 2.5.4.0, it automatically downloads a list of eDonkey servers. How do I avoid this?

THANKS

BYE

[cyko_01]

[profyler1]

Does this apply to win 7 too? or just XP? i mean the patch tcp/ip thing...

[zarggg]

Actually, it never applied in the first place and I'm kind of surprised the developers of Shareaza don't understand this themselves.

Event ID 4226 in Windows XP and Windows Vista applies only to half-open connections, that is, outbound SYN packets that have not yet received an ACK, completing the connection.

It was enacted as a security measure because it was discovered that many viruses sent out packets to thousands, if not millions, of random IP addresses in an effort to spread themselves throughout the Internet. In pre-SP2 Windows XP (and all prior versions of Windows) the "limit" in the TCP stack was an unsigned integer: 65,535 simultaneous connection attempts. ("Limit" in quotes because there was no actual limiting factor beyond the variable type keeping track of them in the TCP stack.) XP SP2 instated a limit of 10 simultaneous half-open connections (and SP3 reset this limit if it was changed).

The key word in this case is "attempts." Once a connection attempt's SYN is properly ACKed by the other side of the connection, it completes, and there is no arbitrary limit to open (completed) connections other than what your network drivers/bandwidth/router can handle. There was never any legitimate reason to increase this limit, as there's no reason any program should attempt 50 (the usual "recommendation") simultaneous half-open connections in the first place.

Regardless, the TCP stack was revised in Windows 7 and this no longer applies.

[ailurophobe]

Well before Win 7, actually. It was obvious pretty soon to even Microsoft that this limit was a mistake.

And you are simply wrong about "there not being any legitimate reason to increase this limit", P2P applications by their nature need to connect to large numbers of hosts, many of which respond to connection attempts slowly or not at all (so you need to wait for the time out), so increasing the limit did give a significant performance boost on start up and at other times Shareaza needed to connect to lots of peers in short time. Even more problematic (and I presume the reason Microsoft fixed this without ever admitting that it was a mistake) was that the limit was not per application, it was shared by all the applications in the system which meant that when Shareaza (or another application needing high numbers of connections) was active other applications would randomly get errors due to "server not responding". In theory Windows returned an error code that enabled applications to recognize the reason and act accordingly, but in practice applications just randomly failed to work correctly.

And yes, Shareaza developers do, and did, understand this...

[mouser9746]

I am new to Shareaza and would like some help getting into the chat rooms so I can get help. I can't connect because I get a message that says: "not enough parameters"

[cyko_01]

[amoranemix]

[cyko_01]

[old_death]

I've verified the script. It should work under Vista and 7 just as it did under XP and 2k, as it takes the install paths (etc.) of Shareaza directly from the registry. Anyway, I've updated some small things: Shareaza Easy Clean Install Script v1.2

@Cyko, you might want to test it first before uploading it to your server, as I can't test it with my current system config (I'm under Linux ATM).

mfg,
Old

[old_death]

This adds a check for admin rights before executing the script: Shareaza Easy Clean Install Script v1.3

@Cyko: Thanks for the suggestion & the example code!

mfg,
Old

[rolandschweiger]

Currently i am enthusically testing the debug builds of shareaze, right now r0 201203 14.
Still i consider Shareaza a very good developement, and i really now am looking forward for IPv6 support.
This would really have many advantages, especially due to the fact that most private users who have some kind of ADSL line will be able to give a proper ipv6 address to each client in the local network.
In my case for example, the ISP does not yet support native ipv6 but i use a tunnel from http://www.sixxs.net with an /64 ipv6 subnet. So each computer attatched to my router gets its own ipv6 address which is
REACHABLE ON ANY PORT FROM OUTSIDE!
And i consider this the main advantage of ipv6 - in most setups, users will neither have to configure port-forwarding-rules in their routers, nor will they have to enable or configure any UPNP things.
Having tested and experimented with ipv6 for quite a while, i really am convinced that it is a long term protocol and that it has to replace ipv4.

Are you currently planning ipv6 support?

greetings

Roland Schweiger

[brov]

Moreover, starting from Windows XP, there is a Teredo client which can set up the tunnel automatically. On Vista and later this client is automatically enabled. With no native IPv6 from ISP, you'll get NAT-Traversal with not much effort .