Gnutella Forums - Connection problems (now) with every p2p program (didn't happen before) NEED HELP!

I kind of feel like an *** for just registering and asking for help and not having been an active member on the forums but I'm desperate and I can't find the answer anywhere.

About a month ago, Limewire stopped working right, along with eMule. eMule had a lowID but the search still worked. However, I seldom ever could connect to anybody (mind you I had highID before with the proper ports forwarded.) Limewire on the other hand, said I was behind a firewall but all my bars were there. So I did a search and it worked. Dloaded the file, and then proceeded to do a second search. The search got stuck and all my green bars disappeared to either 1 or all red. This has happened all the time since then. So I uninstalled Limewire and reinstalled the one on this website. Oddly enough mine ended in .6 before whereas I think the one on the site was .11 . But anyways, I booted it up and did a search. All the bars were back and I wasn't listed as being behind a firewall. It worked, dloaded the file and went on. Now mind you the connection was never great despite Limewire assuring me A) I wasn't behind a firewall and B) there was over 30+ people to dload from. Well I booted it back up the next day and the search stopped working again along with the firewall symbol coming back up and whenever I did a search the bars disappeared again. Now I had 3 files in my queue and they either always say need more sources or occasionally I'll get a connection. The max speed I got on those old queues was 36kb p/s. However, it is very rare. So I read up about how the new Java release might be messing it up and dload an old one. So
I dloaded Update 9. Limewire said it was too out of date dload a new one. So I dloaded Update 11 and it booted back up. And just to make sure it would work, I did DMZ hosting for my IP address on the router (mind you I had the proper ports forwarded before and it was working fine until this whole search not working crap started, I just did this just in case). It's the Linksys BEFSR411 I believe. So booted it back up. Again, it worked the first time, but crapped out after. So I dloaded Ares. And it was working great. Every single search I did worked. I close the program, don't bother doing a search for a couple days. And wham! now the search gets stuck. However, my queued downloads from before are running fairly smoothly. So what exactly is wrong that is messing this up?

Oh btw, I had a Netgear router before and this problem never occured. However, we switched to the Linksys one a little less than two weeks before this problem started happening.

ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!

Oh one last thing, when I switched to DMZ hosting, Limewire doesn't say I'm behind a firewall anymore, BUT the bars still disappear whenever I do a search.