I am writing this thread to hopefully help some people with their Connection problems with Limewire as I know how frustrating it is!

Firstly I will tell you what my problem was.
We were on 28.8kbps dial-up up until 4 months ago. Then we managed to get satelite broadband and the 512kbps plan. I am using Limewire Pro 4.8.1.

I also run ZoneAlarm Secuirity Suite. I had studied this place for weeks and tried all the methods put forward but nothing could help me with my problem.

After 1 month of using the satelite connection and enjoying the superfast speeds of downloading, our Limewire Pro began playing up. It would not connect, and when it did the searches would come back with very little and downloading speed was no more than 1 or 2kbps. So I was back to dialup speed on a satelite connection!

At first I thought it may have been settings but I had configured them for my new internet connection and Limewire had worked flawlessly for over a month on the satelite.

Then I thought that ZoneAlarm was at fault but all Limewire related connection were allowed and I had not changed those settings.

Well, I can't really put it down to one thing that made it faster but firstly I uninstalled the Java I was using. It was like version 4.xxx or something. I downloaded and installed the latest version of it 5.03 I think. Then I also altered some settings just to see what would happen.

I changed the "Downloads" number to 2 so that I am only able to download 2 at a time. I also changed the number of slots for uploads to 2 & 3 for "uploads per person" and "max uploads"

I will admit I dont get the speed that I first did on satelite, but now songs download at around 10kbps which is alot better than before.

Some weird things that maybe someone could help me with still.

* Everytime I start-up Limewire and check the "view sample" in Bug Reports it always has "FALSE" beside "Received Incoming This Session".

*Also I was downloading a song at 10kbps when the status was "Connecting". How can this be happening when i am still connecting?

* Another thing is when I do the test at http://www3.limewire.com:6346/ it says " Your Test Worked! "
but when I do the test at https://www.grc.com/x/portprobe=6346 the status is "closed" for the port 6346.

Anyone help me get the proper downloads speeds and what is the go with the above sites and what do they mean?

Thanks for your time!