Author Topic: Several Search Questions (Read 1818 times)

itsme · « **on:** October 19, 2010, 01:19:11 pm »

I have some questions about searching:

Currently have 2 computers at home connected to the internet over 2 different connections (ADSL and Cable). On both machines WinMX is active. When I start a search on machine 1 its possible that I get 1234 results while the same search on machine 2 (started at the same time) only gives 384 results. Why?
Within the results I often see things like this: Transfer Status: 14 of 14 available. So I think, nice I can download this quickly. But when I click download, the same user seems to have 574 in the queue and the download takes ages (that is, if it ever starts).
Does it make any difference what "Preferred Peer Cache" you use? I think it does but I'm not sure. The reason for asking is that I received a few WinMX hash values and can't find anything when using these hashes. The sender is at the same time downloading the files with these hash values. When I search for the same files, I get nothing. (I'm connected to a peer cache in Europe, he is in Asia).

Can somebody shine some light on this.

White Stripes · « **Reply #1 on:** October 19, 2010, 03:14:30 pm »

https://patch.winmxconex.com

using that? or using piepatch 3.6?

itsme · « **Reply #2 on:** October 19, 2010, 04:14:43 pm »

I'm using WinMX v3.54 beta 4 on both machines. WinMx Comminity Patch 1.0 is installed.

Bluey_412 · « **Reply #3 on:** October 19, 2010, 08:26:04 pm »

For the first part of your query, it's simply a matter of which Primaries you have connected through, even if you are running as Primary yourself.
The search result is based on what files are indexed on what Primaries.
Similarly, if you do a 'Refresh Networks' and re-run the search, you may connect to a different set of primaries and get different search results.
Sometimes you MAY see your other computer, but often, you will not. (And sometimes even your own files, on the same PC)
Some of it is dependent too, on the location of your ISP and how they connect you to the actual internet

Hehehe, it's all a lottery!

GhostShip · « **Reply #4 on:** October 19, 2010, 11:05:38 pm »

Real que values should be no more than 100 places anything over that is likely to to be fake so dont bother even getting in such a que.
On the other point regarding which cache you connect to the network with tbh it will make little to no difference as once your connected initially all the primaries your likley to get are fed to you from the network itself , the caches only provide an initial connection , after that your on your own and after 2 or so minutes a refresh done at that time will enusre your not connected to anything the cache delivered to you.

I hope this extra info is of some interest Itsme.

reef · « **Reply #5 on:** October 20, 2010, 01:53:05 am »

Quote from: itsme on October 19, 2010, 01:19:11 pm

Within the results I often see things like this: Transfer Status: 14 of 14 available. So I think, nice I can download this quickly. But when I click download, the same user seems to have 574 in the queue and the download takes ages (that is, if it ever starts).

I've come across this quite a few times as well. I think it's some sort of hack thats being used by mostly japanese users from what i've seen. All slots appear to be free, then u attempt to download and the users queue has gone from all slots available, to 500 (or some ridiculous amount) in queue. At least the 0 of 0 hack you know you'll never be able to download from the user (unless they manually start you), this 1 mentioned here is even more deceiving.

White Stripes · « **Reply #6 on:** October 20, 2010, 03:21:08 am »

the 3 of 3 and 6 of 6 hacks have been around too....

as for the 'winmx lottery' ... wouldnt it be nice if it always found all the results

itsme · « **Reply #7 on:** October 20, 2010, 06:25:32 am »

Thank you all for the answers. Did really help a lot.

As far as finding "all" the results, it does make a difference to witch peer cache you connect. I do collect a lot of Japanese movies and after restarting WinMX (and changing the peer cache to Asian) the number of results went up by 400%.

So I think, if you are looking for let say German movies, you should tell WinMX to use a European peer cache, for Asian an Asian one and so on.

GhostShip · « **Reply #8 on:** October 20, 2010, 08:17:05 am »

I,m sorry to disappoint you Itsme but what cache you connect to has nothing whatsoever to do with the region setting, that functionality was removed because the userbase had shrunken and so it made sense that all the users would be better off using a combined pool of primaries, should the network grow we have the capability to reactivate that feature but there would need to be some changes in both the patch and the peer cache.

When it comes to searching there is a simple reason why you wont ever get all the results on the network and that is because when you send out a normal search request it has a fixed number of primaries it can pass across once it hits the magic number the packet will be ignored and in this way network queries dont go around the network forever as they may well do otherwise, the exception to this is the hash search, these have a much larger range setting than the plain search and thus will in most cases find a source that would not otherwise appear on your radar. This limit of search is called the search horizon and figures in most network architectures.

itsme · « **Reply #9 on:** October 22, 2010, 04:43:11 pm »

Well, don't know why, but when I go to Settings / WinMX Peer Network and change it from Europe to Asia the number of results are a lot higher.

In most cases I get under 200 when Preferred Peer Cache is set to Europe and get over 3000 when set to Asia.