That message is not a problem. You are connected as a leaf to 3 ultrapeers. If you were an ultrapeer you would not see that message. But only a small % of users can connect as ultrapeers. Ultrapeers help others to connect to the gnutella network.

As to why you haven't been able to downld anything, I'm not sure. It could be your ISP shaping you or else, your choice of downloads.

Beware of search results where you get 100 for one file, 99 for the next, etc. & instead choose those with 10 or 20 or so results under the # column of the search results. Those high search results are most likely fake files being spammed by groups such as Overpeers.