Thanks LotR.
You rock, bruddah.

Sorry: all gnutella network files.

Here's where I stand:
Deleted LW prefs folder, replaced the newly created downloads.dat file and upon restart, same problem.

I disabled all but of band searching. Woolah, dl's began in earnest... for another few seconds.

Didn't go to 0kbs; just stopped everything and stood still. Couldn't force quit and then Finder hung for almost 5 minutes till I did a hard restart.

Went to the new account and ran my dl's to 18. Five or six by 'browse files'.
No trouble.

Back at the problem account there are 17 incomplete files; I keep that folder perfectly concurrent with what is actually downloading.
Interestingly, many have a good chunk completed, meaning those files were downloading fine for a while.

I removed my downloads.dat file again and began some new dl's, requesting some of the same files. None by 'browse files.'

Everything was fine for a 1/2 hour when things went awry again. I noticed as previously, most of the files were coming in from 8-10 users, and the transfer of all files together ranged up toward 3000kbs. Wouldn't that be 3mb of my 25 down, or is it measured differently?

So I immediately paused 7 of 12 dl's and the five remaining went from 0kbs to normal, now transferring (all) at about 775kbs. Began resuming one by one now at 10 files @1500 kbs steady. Some finished, resumed more. Up to 12 transfers at around 3000, then steadies at 10@ 1500 again.

I haven't limited LW bandwidth; I'm wondering if FIOS is kicking me off? Your question about browsers seems pertinent, as Safari was extremely slow but successful for a minute until it indicated it couldn't open a particular page.

Speakeasy says everything is working fine, 25/20. I've left the gnutella port at default, 6811.

No recent FIOS limit issues I could find, but I did come across fios router limitations (albeit from two years ago), in the NAT table the number of connections may be limited. Perhaps?

Also reset the router (what a concept) and in conjunction with keeping number of connections and bandwidth lower have avoided the problem so far.