which part? and dont say all of it cos i was wondering myself if u was reading what i was putting at times!!!!!!

-a port has nothing to do with a firewall, but you have to open the used port on a firewall to let the app access 100% the internet.

- You have winblows xp , so get a firewall or you'll be hacked soon.

-you should not use AOL.

- the kb/s vs kB/s wasn't addressed at you if you read the thread correctly.

-the speed problem is what we are trying to resolve here, so do what suggested:
a) change port
b)try connecting via another ISP or 56K to see if the ISP is responsible

:o

ok i apperciate your time on this :-) but i think were not quite understanding each other properly, but i`ll try 2 make it clear as posable,
yep i did that already have tryed putting it to 1000 and several other sugested values in fourm and help files. but nothing changed
56K modem, like iv already said i dont think i could c any drop on dial up cos dialup has a fastest conection of about 7KB/s and i wouldent b able to c any real drop from such a low level (as iv also already said mine does not drop to 0) so a speed of 2-3KB/s could b quite normal on dialup or it could b concidered a drop but how can anyone tell the diff.
?? y not ?? its never caused any problems at all except maybe now, which is y i wanted to know if all the people getting this drop off of speed r also useing AOL cos then i could c the problem prob is with AOL. i wasent asking if u use AOL cos i prsume you have not got this problem.
this is not realy an option , it costs money, time and u often have to have a years contract with broadband isp,s so its a bit much just to test an idea
o and i lied a little, i do have a firewall (zonealarm pro & SP2 xp FW)but for the testing period of LW i have uninstalled both cos whenever i say i use a firewall people get stuck on trying to get me to configure them and cant get past it, so i uninstaled them so i could say i dont have 1 and hopefully i wouldent get anymore advise on setting up the dam firewall.

please dont think im not very greatfull 4 all your input,
Thx v much Greg.

Ok I'll explain you what happens more and more often with ISPs:

Bandwidth you use is the most costly thing for a ISP, especially bandwidth between countries. Since P2P is the most consumming bandwidth application for ISPs and that Gnutella is one the biggest P2P network, some ISPs detect Gnutella tranfers then throttles them so the users get discouraged from using P2P. Some ISP simply block the most used port of an network, for Gnutella it is 6346. Here is appears the port isn't blocked since you can connect and search.

Here is one possible thing happening: you begin a transfer, by a certain amount of transfer or speed reached, the ISP looks automatically at Gnutella headers, if found, they throttle the traffic of Gnutella, hence your downloads slower than 2kB/s.

But you should try completing a big download and compare the download time between your DSL and your dialup (56K). Try downloading one 10 meg or so file in LW with the two connections types and measure time for download completion (for the exact same file).

Also, you didn't tell if you were downloading from Limewires or Shareazas, I'm presently on a dl for which shareazas sources outnumber the LWs ones, and my dl speed (when downloading at all) sucks.

Ciao

Im useing Limewire but unlike u im only testing downloads with other LW sources.
I understand excatly what u mean about the isp,s and what there doing 2 try 2 discurage p2p and if the answer to my question about the other users who also suffer from the same effect being on AOL as well would cirtanly prove that in this case it is indeed the isp, but the odd thing is that over the last couple of months i have been searching 4 a good p2p program, i have tryied almost all of the main fileshare software now and that includes Gnutella, Shareazas, Bearshare, kazza lite, Morphious, Blubster and some bit tolarant programs, the list goes on but even though Gnutella, Shareazas and Bearshare r on the same network these programs dident act in this maner.

I thourght i had finaly found the program that i was most comfatable and happy with when i installed Limewire and i dont realy want 2 move on to the next cos im feed up with dealing with all the bundles of crap that come with most programs.

but one thing i have found is that if i compleatly logout and shut down AOL and then re-logon that i get nearly an hour of good DL speed before it tappers off, so i might just stick with that as it only takes 3 or 4 relogs to get 1GB down within 3 or 4 hours, so thats not so bad.

Anyhow thx 4 all your input and time, and maybe theres somthing in this threed that will help others with the same problem even if the solution is to change your ISP.

Thx again Greg.