You can tell your connection status by clicking the connection tab.
Connection Status>Ulatrapeer or Leaf will be displayed there. That is your connection status to the "G" network.

There are advantages and dis-advantages to this. You will just need to see how it effects your system and setup.

I run as an UP with no side effects, but systems can be setup and configured different ways, so what applies to my comp., may not apply to others.

As far as free loaders go that is up to you. Mine is set to allow free loaders as long as they are sharing 1 file. I remember when I started out and had 0 files to share, until I built up my file system, and learned how to effectively use p2p.