What firewall hardware/software do you have? I have a Netware router and Norton's firewall with OSX firewall disabled. The router gives my mac a static IP (196.168.0.2) and I have forced my IP address. I found my IP address using a DSL speed checker website that was kind enough to tell me what it is.

If you were downloading mp3's at 2-3 minutes, you're probably concidered at Cable/DSL user. It's about the same for me.

You may want to check the apple website and get the latest update for OSX and Java. I'm now running OSX 10.2.8, Java 1.4.1, LW 3.5.8.

On second thought... if the application is firing up, then it's probably not java. Something is screwy.