in the past , when there were problems connecting to limewire or lemonwire or any p2p app , the bottom left of the page would always show some activity ; the bars would change colour for a short time and then a note would appear saying something like , attempting to connect ;

but for the last 5 months those bars have been totally and completely unchanged ; just grey bars and the word connecting ; there has not been even one partial connection .

Do you port forward for those apps? This might be something to try. A google or portforward.com for your model would easily find instructions I'm sure. I found https://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/...ing/td-p/84698 upon a quick search. But there's probably better descriptions out there. First you need to set up a static LAN address.

Why is it that universal plug and play does not seem to work so well as it did in the past .

No reason why UPnP should not work unless something in system, router or program settings has changed. However port forwarding done properly is ever reliable. Each program however needs to use a unique port. If two or more use the same port then it causes problems and fails.