transfers can ony go as fast as the slowest link in the chain. So if the university, ISP, or whomever has put a throttle on filesharing bandwidth, that's the slowest link. If the other hosts are really busy and poorly set up, maybe they can only serve up 1/2 a KB. So even ten of those will only get you downloads at 5KB/s

That said, all you can do is check to make sure that yours is set to the max it can.

The fastest setup is one that can accept incoming connections. Search these forums for the phrase "accept incoming" Technobabble Warning though

Some other general tricks: don't let incomplete files clutter up your downloads, and concentrate on a few files at a time, rather than trying to download 100's and bogging down your machine. Fewer files and searches means LW can devote more resources to those few files faster.

A few of us have noted more speed problem posts than usual, so maybe there's a problem beside the typical user configuration situations.