host connections inconsistent; IP questions

I honestly read the FAQ here, in the help menu of Limewire, and it's "usage" docs to try to find out about these issues: (i have no firewall; using home dsl; winME; lots of RAM/mhz)

-- I have a friend, we want to share some files. Can we both just enter an IP that is showing in one or the other's current connections? We did this and found each others files a few times, but now we never "see" each others files. Plus when we DID, they usually stopped up at 99%.

-- I used winipcfg and netstat to find my IP. They show different numbers. Using www.dslreports.com's IP relfector shows that netstat's results are accurate... why is winipcfg different? ( have winpppoet dsl)

-- Even giving my friend my actual IP, he can't find my files anymore. The FAQ never says how we find our "port" number so we used 6346...

-- Connected hosts: if there are hundreds of hosts out there, how is my computer finding significant numbers of search "hits" when I have only 3 or 5 hosts connected at a time?

-- Even if I'm happy with the hosts I have, they seem to randomly change over time, out of my control.

-- Setting the option to autoconnect to a host on start doesn't seem to do anything. I add an IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxort but once I am online I instead get randomly changing hosts again as noted earlier.

-- Do I need the "connect1.gnutella.xxxxx", etc etc, hosts in the autoconnect options?