Thank you very much. That's the detail I've been looking for. I've got incoming=true, just about instant uploads, incoming searches pouring in, and speeds in & out whose values reflect what I'd expect when I make adjustments to max downloads, upload bandwidth, slots, etc.
I understand that there are multiple narrows to overcome throughout the pipe, and my intuition's been nagging at me that something's not quite right on this side. Originally, when I had looked at the DHCP tab, I'd only looked at what the starting IP was- I hadn't pressed the table button to see the list. I found my computer's name there, and saw that the last 3 were different than what I'd set previously. ZoneAlarm's squared away, it seems that there's not really much to it in there but changing java apps to "ask", and that's fine. Thank you again. I promise to pass it forward.