Well I overcame my shyness and spoke to the Techies at my ISP.

They report no cap on transfers nor block on Gnutella, particularly no reason for a slow down during the hours I inhabit (after midnight).

As I have reported acqlite seems to be a better client than LW. It seems to connect for longer and see a file through to completion far better than LW but nowhere as well as Poisoned does.

Poisoned though is tapping into the much much bigger giftd network, 3.25m users as opposed to only 97k Gnutella. That alone would probably indicate better success, but it rarely gets as many multiple sources as LW. Despite the lack of multiple sources, when Poisoned connects it persists usually to completion and at a far greater speed than LW.

I might risk putting my PC onto the outside net (hope I don't regret the decision). I'll experiment with LW on there, it really has my curiosity aroused that we have such different experiences.