Torrents are different, no they don't run over same network.

You must have a hard time with torrents if people are struggling to download from you. You are seeing the brick wall because of your router's NAT which in an effect operates like a firewall. Torrents are about equal sharing. With some torrent programs at least you need to keep a a good ratio with download v's upload else you either get slowed down downloads with ratio poor (the program does this), else blocked by users with their program settings who refuse to share their files with people who have poor share ratios.

My thoughts are, port forwarding will do two things, one is hopefully make the connection more reliable (not sure since you said you don't use the router as a normal router per se), and help give clear passage to the port you forward meaning others will have less problems uploading from you on both Gnutella network & torrents.