Http://www.emuleplus.tk
Emule tweak tips guide / speeding up ed2k network clients
You may wonder why you should use emule in place of edonkey, well that's a matter of choice, I prefer emule, it's open source and very regularly updated. Changing between emule and edonkey is very simple, just download the zip file and copy the files into your edonkey directory (perhaps backup the edonkey directory first!).
What Is Emule / Edonkey?: emule is a popular peer2peer / p2p file sharing client, it's an open source version of edonkey and uses the same ed2k / edonkey2000 p2p network. Most of the edonkey tips are therefore applicable to emule. Emule is a little like napster, the differences from napster include: It has many servers in many countries which are unlikely to be shut down. It allows sharing of any file type (not just mp3's). It does multiple source download, i.e. it will retrieve the file from many places at once, it can give a very fast download (like 60 Kbytes/sec on ADSL).
See the ed2k links at the bottom of this post for more details.
Here's a few tips to serve as a guide, I'll post more as I get round to it, please add more if I haven't covered it
In no particular order:
Cap the upload: (on a broadband connection anyway) The reason to do this isn't so you share less, emule and the edonkey network needs people sharing or no one gets anything. When you are downloading data for each little bit that emule downloads it must send an 'ack' (acknowlegement) if your upload stream is running at your connection limit these 'acks' wont get back/will be slowed down so you won't be sent the next little bit. Set the upload cap to about 70% to 90% of your total upload total capacity, so for instance if you are on 512/256 ADSL the max upload is about 25k/sec, set the upload cap at about 20k/sec in the options. Emule has a built in ratio mechanism, if you set the upload less than 10 or 11k/sec you will be 'punished' (i.e. your download speed will be severly capped which I think is kinda good!). You can tell if you have set the cap too low because the upload speed will be set to a fixed value when you close and re-open the window.
The setting is in 'preferances' > 'connection' in the 'limits' part on the right.
Dont pen your emule in!: emule (along with other p2p progs) behaves like a 'server', that means it wants to accept connections from other 'peers'. If you trust that emule is relativly secure then you should allow it *full access* to the internet. It's easy to believe that running a firewall and only allowing emule to connect in certain ways makes you more secure, I think that is wishful thinking! If you run a firewall then I'd advise allowing any connection to emule both udp an tcp incoming and outgoing, anything else will not allow edonkey to work at its best.
You can check how 'penned in' your emule is by looking at the bottom right of the client window, if you are connected to a server then the little icon should have green arrows round the logo, e.g.
Sometimes the server is too busy to give you a proper connection, try re-connecting to another server if the id is normally high (green icon) but you have been given a low id / emule is penned in (icon is yellow) .
another way to check is goto http://www.edonkey2000.com/documentation/lowid.html and goto the link given in the 'Low Id Check'. The number is an ID which emule gets when it connects to a server, a low number (like 150 or so) indicates you are penning your emule in, the number needs to be in the many millions for true emule usage.
Emule can use configurable ports, the ports it will use are listed in
'preferances' > 'connection' in the 'client port' area.
If you are behind a NAT / router these ports need to be mapped to your internal network IP address and any firewalls you have should allow these ports to be connectable from the internet. The port on the left is TCP the one on the right is UDP. On mine I allow both inbound from any IP by configuring my firewall / NAT. I don't personally believe emule is totally secure (no software is w/o bugs!) but forceing emule to connect via a server may not make it any more secure or could even make it less secure (in theory at least), it depends on what exploit is found, just keep an eye out for new versions and updates
Use a links website: I think using a 'ed2k links' website is the way to go, many people use these sites and therefore the listed version of a file is likely to be available from more sources (better spread). Searching emule / edonkey network yourself is good for things which are a little obscure but you can often get some really great ideas on what to get next by looking at sites which list lots of emule / edonkey content . Also check out a service called jigle (again see links thread) as it does a good job of searching the edonkey / emule network and will show the different names a file is shared with.
Emule connection tweaks: If you use NT/XP or win2k then you can really tweak up some of the settings, assuming your router / NAT and PC that runs emule will handle it. Win98 doesn't do such a good job managing network connections and a slow PC (p300) won't handle much tweaking either. Some router / firewalls will spit the dummy at the large amount of entries in the NAT table if you tweak these too high (you have been warned!). These are the values I use and they seem to work for me, try tweaking them is all I suggest and let us know how you get on!
Some popular content is so well spread there are literally 1000's of people sharing the same file, emule and the edonkey network is very good at finding sources for the file you want, this is where you client's config could limit or increase your download speed.
On the connections screen (see below) you can set the 'max sources per file', I have set mine to 2500, I have seen this limit reached but 2500 seems enough generally. The other setting 'max connections' is total connections for your client, since most of the time I download 2 popular files at once (tops) I have mine set to twice the 'max sources per file' (I doubt I ever get to this limit!). You can check if the 'max connections' is ever reached, it's on the statistics window
'Statistics' (window) > 'Connection' > 'Max Connection Limit Reached'
I have never seen mine show anything other than 0 (i.e. limit not reached).
The other interesting setting is in the
'Preferances' > 'Extended Settings'
The 'max. new connections / 5secs'
Here again is dependant on your OS and the speed of your PC as well as the NAT (I suspect most NAT setups can handle quite a high value). This setting tells the client how many new connections it can make in a set period of time (obvious really!). I have mine set to 1000, it's not going to make as big a difference as the 'max sources per file' (above) but is will help a small amount when you start a new file that is well spread.
The last setting on the same window is 'use credit system', if you assume most people have this turned on and you turn it on also it will speed up transfers between you and others trying to get the same file, this setting is less useful if your IP changes every day or hourly!
Download priority: On the main 'transfer' window you can right click and set the priority of a download, I always set mine to 'high', it tells the client how 'agressive' to be in looking for new sources. Since I have set the 'max sources per file' to a higher value I want to max out the amount of sources. It seems if you set it to 'auto' then it will lower the priority to 'auto [No]' (automatically set to normal) when it has about 200 or 300 sources, we are looking to get to 2500 per file
Have fun sharing[/url]
Emule Setup, Tips & Tweaks Guide.
Use of undefined constants causes assumptions!
