One of the projects that I'm involved with at the moment is looking at the facilities for people on the move, or who don't have a stable base for some reason. These include, businessmen, campers, tourists and others with "green" political ideas. Most of the time I'm using McDonalds, libraries and garden centres etc. Libraries don't allow you to use port 8333, McD averages at around 30Kb/s. Right now I'm in a garden centre, and I'm sync'ing at around 300Kb/s - they've got nice Earl Grey tea at twice the price, but no power sockets.

I think it's something to do with relaying transactions. With no input port, I may not be affecting that, but I have noticed that a couple of nodes have blocked me in the past, so they may need faster responses for some reason. I understand that miners use piping, and that probably ensures they get updated quickly. Perhaps someone wiith more knowledge than me could explain it a little better.

I can't do that using free WiFi. I might try to get the libraries to open port 8333 specifically for Bitcoin, but they may not like people downloading the whole blockchain.

Even though he doesnt help others with syncing much and can only open 8 outgoing connections, he still rellay incoming transactions thus helping the network with transaction propagation and decentralization. Also more nodes = the original transaction sender IP become more anonymous.

I've always thought a node should be kept running 24/7. I sure appreciate your willingness to help, and you DO help, we thank you all for what you do, but keep in mind you are not doing much.