In both cases where the issue of download speed came up I think feel the problem is almost certainly the local network connection. As with ISPs, business and institutional LANs health are the responsibility of the local LAN adminiustrators... some do a superb job and others are often marginally competent... general performance may suffer due to poor design and implementation of the network... too many folks trying to squeeze through the same segment of a network for example. There are also cases where the ports for Gnutella are completely blocked or throttled through router bandwith management tools. In the end... I don't think that your client can do anything about the problem... compare notes with your peers it they are using the same appliactions and see what their results are.