Newbie question

Hi.

I've been playing around with limewire 1.3 for about a week now. Nice program, nice UI.

Just struggling with one big issue (there are smaller ones, but one at a time...

Probably a Gnutella issue more than a limewire issue, but....
I'm finding when I download, I search, find maybe 20 - 30 results, but if I try to download (any number - just 1 or all of them), about 98% of the time or so, they are "busy". The other 2% are fine, but I have to search several times a day to find 1 to download. I've left large numbers of "busy" files retrying for hours and I've never seen one file go from busy to start downloading. Is this just the nature of the beast or is there a problem? What does busy *really* mean? Is there some configuration in my client which means people are "banning" me? (the settings are mostly default - I've just put in my true IP, as I'm on a LAN). I have about 150 MP3's shared.

I'm behind a firewall - does that make a difference? (keeping in mind I *have* successfully downloaded a few files, just not many). 6346 is open.

Cheers,

m00n1