AFAIK port forwarding shouldn't slow things down. But if you really don't want to use it, you can go back to using UPnP & see if that's ok & whether your firewall icon stays off.

I have a port forwarded for LW & it hasn't slowed things down for me.

Just remember that Shaw have been known to throttle p2p bandwidth, so that might account for slow speeds.
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=33712