Keep in mind a lot of schools have invested in a new technology which allows them to throttle bandwidth to p2p type applications.

So it is correct to assume that they might not block access but throttle the bandwith allocated to such services as to discourage use.

Regarding the freeloader setting - I don't think that this is affecting your abilitiy to connect to gnutella as other factors seem to be evident of causing you connection problems.

Hope this helps.

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