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Guest

Hello!

The title is appealing, and I will provide you some hints to setup iMule better (hopefully). But (yes there is a but), this is based on my own *short* experiment only, mostly based on guesses. Thus I would like to have some comments from the devs and also encourage you to do your own experiments with I2P/iMule.

The goal here is to improve the health of the iMule network. The downside is it somewhat breaks the I2P neutrality, giving priority to iMule over other services. Hopefully, as approximatly 1/3 of the I2P network use iMule and this situation is mostly related to political event in France; having a healthier iMule network will attract more french people (we are here talking about a huge number of people), thus will hopefully benefit to I2P as a whole.

You also need to consider the hints here are very dependant on the actual I2P situation, which is subject to major changes, thus do not consider this setup as good for the long term. Beside, it probably will need some refinements.

After this introduction, here we go:

To help discuss this setup, I will always tell you first the setup to change (based on the default setup using I2P version 0.7.3 and iMule 1.4.2,), then after explain why I think it is better this way.

I2P general setup:

* Increase the tunnel number for iMule to 4:
go here : http://127.0.0.1:7657/configtunnels.jsp
find the iMule setup (2 instances)
"Client tunnels for iMule" -> "Quantity" : set it to "4 tunnels" both for "Inbound" and "Outbound".
You have 4 values to change (because there is 2 client tunnels for iMule).
Then go to the bottom of the page and hit the "Save changes" button.

Reasoning behind this: iMule is a huge network consumer. Allowing more tunnels for it will give a better network connectivity (I have more sources) and it reduces the "Message delay" in my particular setup.
The downsides are: I2P will consume more CPU power and it breaks the network neutrality of I2P giving even more importance to iMule over other services.

* setup a good value for your bandwidth:
go here: http://127.0.0.1:7657/config.jsp
give a good bandwidth here "Bandwidth limiter", it is dependant on your ISP.
check also the "Inbound TCP connection configuration" using the SSU utility if the values are right "use IP address detected by SSU" and "use the same port configured for SSU". It can be tricky to setup right if you are behind a router/NAT, but I think it is worth a try.
Then hit the "Save changes" button.

iMule setup:
The goal here is to improve the number of bytes you upload to each client, hopefully up to a full chunk (with is approximately 9 to 10 MB). Uploading full chunk is important in the iMule network, because each file is divided in chunks of ~9MB, and clients of this network only start to share "full chunk". Thus the sooner a client have a full chunk the sooner it will share on the network. Thus it improves the network heath.

As of now, it seems most clients do not upload full chunks, thus even if you follow my instructions, until most of the clients upload full chunks you wont probably send a full chunk to each client (9 to 10 MB) but iMule will most probably just upload a partial chunk to complete another partial upload. However, my setup improve the number of bytes I upload to each client (at least on my particular setup).

In the iMule GUI, go to Preferences -> Connection.
Set download and upload accordingly to your I2P "Bandwidth limiter", let say approximatly 80% of it.
e.g. if you set in the I2P general preferences "Inbound rate: 100 KBps bursting up to 150 KBps", you can set in iMule "Download: 80 kB/s"
if you set in the I2P general preferences "Outbound rate: 20 KBps bursting up to 24 KBps", you can set in iMule "Upload 15 kB/s"
Now divide your Upload by 3. In our example that is 15/3=5 (almost). Set the "Slot Allocation" to this value. In our example "Slot Allocation: 5 kB/s". IMHO it is better to have your upload value being a power of 3, as iMule will have an integer value to play with...
Then hit the "OK" button.

Reasoning behind this:
With 4 tunnels allowed to iMule, I have most of the time a flux of upload to only 1 client, sometimes to 2 clients, and rarely to 3 clients at the same time. Thus having a third of my upload bandwidth into slot allocation will allow only 3 uploading clients at the same time, optimizing my upload for those 3 clients and giving them faster upload, hopefully up to a full chunk if needed.

I2Phuxx0r Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 697

hey!

A few remarks:
1. it is not "bad" to I2P if the imule users optimize their I2P routers Wink

2. latest mtn have changed the way of configure the options.
echelon.i2p/I2Pguide/ have already implemented it.
3. it is really the best to use a seperate I2P router
4. even with 5 clients connected, one tunnel works fine.
It is just bandwidthwhich is better with more tunnels (and partly reliability)

amiga

quit pretending that imule works!

Guest

It does:

link: http://icache.i2p/?1c4cfc85e49345a1690361a6b30cf46c Twisted Evil

I2Pisshead Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 75

Guest

@yac,

dude, that's ironic, right?

btw, another hint:

Sometimes, iMule lost the sources for the file it downloads: the download bar turn fully red (or the source field just on the right of it is very low, e.g. "1"); in this case right-click on the file you're downloading and hit "stop", then right-click again and hit "resume". This will force iMule to perform another search for new sources and hopefully it will yield sources.

Use this only when necessary, if you play with it (let's say more than 1 time in 1 hour), other clients might consider you're bad client and will ban you.

I2Phuxx0r Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 697

HI!

Just to make it clear:
It does not work is translated to: iMule does not start and does not connect.

If iMule starts up and connect, it is working!

If downloads are slow, thats some other problems, but if you can search and find something, it indeed IS working.

Most problems with slow downloads are due to old iMule versions being used, old I2P versions being used, bandwidth settings not set correct or program just being run 2h/day.
iMule and I2P are different than emule and usual software, it needs some special kind of treatment and view on it, e.g. it needs 1-3h until I2P router is connected nicely into the I2P net and works best.

Amiga

Guest

Hi amiga,

@guest, indeed. This topic focus on "iMule is slow, how can I improve it?", not on iMule does not work, sucks, is broken by design, etc. Please open a new topic for that...

I2Pisshead Joined: 23 May 2009 Posts: 74

I2Pisshead Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 75

I2Pisshead Joined: 05 Apr 2009 Posts: 75

I2Phuxx0r Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Posts: 697

HI!

Ok, you can run iMule and find some files.
That tells me, basic iMule works and it transfers data via I2P.
Which means: it is working!
If it would not work, it will not start up or transfer ANY data.

Like internet connection: if you get data through the line, it IS working.

Working is binary: it works or it does not!

If you cannot see all your files in search or other search/transfer issues are due to a lot of facts:
1. small network
2. kadmelia not perfect
3. net is kinda slow due to I2P limits
4. to much files shared
5. maybe some remaining bugs in I2P

But if you can search files and even can download some of those, I define it as a working software.

Not finding all of shared files is a minor tweak, even in emule I never find all of my shared files - due to kadmelia problems.

Just remember:I2P and iMule are still beta software with a rather small net - do not expect perfect resolutions. It is ongoing work.
And as long as only one person working on imule, it takes more time to get it into a state everybody will be satiesfied.

But stopping now and come back in 2 years gets into chicken/egg problem: with no user in network, no new comes in, as there is no stuff available. With no new users, no new stuff comes in... go back to start.

Amiga

I2Pisshead Joined: 23 May 2009 Posts: 74

Thanks for kind suggestions. I am not searching for anything specific--just want to be part of community and make sure that the software is usable.

So I upgraded from 0.7.3/1.4.1 to 0.7.3-8/1.4.2. The only other difference was omitting --enable-allgmp when compiling iMule.

First of all, a *huge* progress -- when I typed "french" on the search bar, I immediately got 440 results! That is similar to what yac reported earlier. I never got any french results before!

I was rejoicing too early, though. When typed "clubstar", the search only found 4 of my 2247 tracks (even after waiting 2-3 hours). That is less than 0.2% search efficiency, which I wouldn't call a "minor tweak"!!!

What is the point of sharing if nobody can find the stuff??? I'll delete the other 2243 files to save my disk space, then. (Please don't tell me to post all of them at imules-weed.i2p.)

Alltogether I can find 603 mp3's, 317 jpg's, 312 avi's, 86 ogm's, 81 ogg's and 97 mkv's. That's about 1500 files, which is far less than the 300k files that are allegedly shared.

I don't understand the point about small network. I never complained about not enough stuff being shared. I never complained about slow download or not enough sources. I just want to FIND stuff that IS shared. And I want other people to find stuff that I share myself. Finding less than 1% of the shared stuff is NOT satisfactory for me.

In many cases, it makes downloading totally pointless. For example, I would only download complete albums, but with current search efficiency, all tracks of an album are almost never found. Another example--to get subtitles in vobsub format, you need *.idx file and *.sub file. The search finds *.idx for one of my movies and *.sub for the other one. In both cases these files are completely useless (not to mention that subtitles without a movie are not quite useful either).

We have just 200 users, most of them are even online, so WHY is search so inefficient??? Do you REALLY think this is normal???

PS. I added a very cute music video -- "Smoke Belch - The Sabres Of Paradise.avi". I guess there is no need to post ed2k link, because iMule is "working".

Guest