Ok most of that sounds good, now i have some new questions. I also went to my isp over the past month doing speed tests, (just upgraded from regular cable to premium cable), to catalog my results as bandwith with cable is pooled so i have gotten my average over a month. I am wondering first, since you sound like you know what your talking about with limewire what u would suggest for my upload slots. I have it currently set to 3 per person and 3 slots max. I set the upload bandwidth to 43KB/s, down from unlimited, as per your suggestions. I have noticed that i get a bunch of queued ( 5 or 6 on average) people and my speeds drop when that happens.

2004-11-02 14:07:41 EST: 5425 / 480
Your download speed : 5555865 bps, or 5425 kbps.
A 678.2 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 491722 bps, or 480 kbps.
A 60 KB/sec Transfer rate

Now for step f. I had my conns set to 10 ( long time dialup user, old habits die hard) and i have steadly increased them up to 25 so far but the most im seeing is up to 300KB/s with the file "over and over again" by nelly with 900+ hosts. I am wondering if it is possible for me to see close to the 678KB/s with limewire. Also these results are always great with mp3 files. My problems with speed are only with large files, zips and rars. And these 3 files have been trying to dl for 1 week steady now, so i would hope they are connected. I am refering to files over 100Mb, 2 are 600+ and one is 400+. The 400mb file is about 87% complete after 1 week. All have 20+ hosts. Again any help would be appreciated. And thanks very much for the info so far, it is very helpful and im finally starting to get a handle on the inner workings of limewire.