Limewire's worked for months, now it doesn't. Why?

Folks, I've been using Limewire for quite some time, and I've been on broadband DSL with Bellsouth.net for a few months. Limewire just stopped working for me about a week ago, practically coinciding with the 1.8 release. I can't get Bearshare to work either.

I've contacted Bellsouth tech support and they say that they're not blocking ANYTHING. Of course, I have no way to verify this.

Is Gnutella in some sort of crisis or something? Limewire comes up and gets some hosts from router.limewire.com, but it cannot connect to any of these hosts at all. Please note that this exact same configuration was working absolutely spotlessly for months up until a few days or weeks ago.

Is something going on Internet-wide with Gnutella? Or has anyone heard that Bellsouth is blocking Gnutella clients?

Any help would be appreciated. Send condolences, help, or instructions to junk@digitalforge.com.

Thanks!