I am puzzled. I now understand that the red locations are people behind firewalls, and that this makes it tougher to download...

For the past week, I have come to associate these red locations as great places to download from. I see one and I jump for joy. For some reason, all of the black locations I try (usually I only try T1s, T3s, and cables) never work. Whenever I try a red location (again, always T1, T3, or Cable) it always gives me a speed of 16kb-60kb/sec. It almost never fails.

Can someone explain to me why this is? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Also, I've found that the quality indicators (the stars) are not consistent with the results I've been getting!

Thanks!

This is indeed puzzling. Firewalls are supposed to be hard to download from. Since most here know this, I think they stay away from them and go for the normal, or black colored, ones. Consequently, firewalled clients have transfer slots available more often since people don't want to download from them. I have found good results with firewalled clients as well. Some firewalled clients are horrible at uploading materials, but many people change the firewall settings to permit LW to run or force their computer's IP address.

I don't really know how the whole quality indicator thing works. It works ok for me, but there are several times when I find a 4 star client refusing a connection and 0 star client giving me instant connection and excellent speed.