When you send out a search request, attached to that request is your TTL number. After each computer sends back results to you and then forwards it to all the computers that its connected to, the TTL number is decreased by one. So if you have a TTL of 3 then you can only get three 'generations' of hosts and results. The reason this is limited at all is so the network doesn't become clogged. I'd recommend a TTL of 5 or so. Increasing it will give you more search results, but will put a greater strain on your modem.

As for download speeds, you must know that the Gnutella network is very decentralized, and as such very unreliable. Also because it is so decentralized, you are very likely connecting to computers far away (as in other continents) and it can take a while for the data to travel that far. This might be helped by connecting to the group that corresponds to your continent in the Community tab.

Try tinkering with the amount of connections up, in the connections tab. Maintaining a connection can take a fair amount of bandwidth on a 56k, so you might get better speeds with less connections. You will get less search results though. Or you could try this: searching for something, and after you get the results, pressing the disconnect button. Now your bandwidth can be concentrated on the downloads, instead of the connections.

Hope that helped,
David C-M