As an experement to investigate what I and others percieve to be a general slowing of network performance I searched for one of my own files. It wrongly said I had a modem connection(I have the fastest cable connection available, T1 is checked in options) and the speed was listed at 192. My uploads are set to unlimited. When I downloaded it, it started at 2Kb/s, then slowed to a stop, saying it was waiting for hosts. Then it starts again, but at 0kb/s! No one else is DLing it from me.
Please tell me this is due to some glitch that prevents you from DLing from yourself. Otherwise it tends to support the suspicions of network decay.

That suggests filewalls or other upstream blocks, like ISP filtering or throttling.

The modem report would be correct if that is the case, since reported speed is not the same as declared speed.

You can have a fast broadband connection to the web, but if your gnutella connections are blocked by whatever, then maybe you can only connect to gnutella like a modem.

A good test would be to get someone with a known decent connection to Direct Connect with you. The better test would be to sign up for broadband with a competitor who explicitly allows filesharing.

btw--I whenever I noticed any slowing of the network, I bugged my ISP. With a clear connection to gnutella, I would have to say the network works much better than it did a year ago. Your experience (an a few other of the more than 1.5 million users) obviously differs.

Best wishes tracking down the block. It's a pain.

I am in Netherlands where p2p is still pretty loose, my isp swears no restrictions/filters have been added to cause my slowdown. In fact they advertise they ave increased our cable to T1 or better speed on the premise of facilitating fast massive DLing. The only firewall is WindowsXP, and it is set to allow free access to Limewire.
Now the DL is just sitting there an hour later at 25%, waiting for sources(known to me to be available, it's mine and noone else is DLing it).
On popular files I still get reasonable dl speeds, 60-80Kb/s.
For comparison, Shareaza found the file ok, but insists there are no sources.

Good points. I'm on a mac, so I can't help with the Windows setup. It's beginning to sound like downloading one's own files isn't supported.

Just to confirm, can you accept incoming connections? The Options->Bug Reports->View example should have a line that says Accept Incoming this session=True. If it says false, then there is a block somewhere.

Lastly, if you'd like me to check: PM me a magnet of one of your unique files, and I'll try if you want (or I can send you a magnet of one of mine if you prefer).

cheers