Firewall
 

I called my ISP (Bellsouth) to see if there was a firewall inside my modem. The tech rep. told me 'yes' and then I asked him if it was possible to open up port 6346. I also told him in a round about way that I needed it open for p2p sharing. He said that he understood and then he opened the port. He told me Bellsouth did not throttle or block p2p sharing, but the modem comes standard with the firewall.

After he opened the port, I restarted and opened LW. I changed my firewall config. to - Listen on Port:6346 & Manual Port Forward:6346. The little brick wall disappeared in front of the globe. Is this the right thing to do? Mind you, I didn't have a problem uploading or downloading before this, but my download speeds were kinda slow. <<<<-----Probaly due to poor settings.

Here is my speed test: 6369kbps (795.9KBps), UL - 424kbps (53KBps).
Bellsouth DSL Extreme

Could someone give me their knowledgeable opinion on what I done and what I need to do from here?

Sounds like the port forwarding worked well:) If the firewall icon disappears then it means that there's no firewall interfering with LW's performance.
Have you noticed any improvement in your download speeds since then?

You could have a look through this thread, it has some good tips for optimising LW's performance
Configuring LW for best performance

They improved some, but not what I was expecting. I can download files that give 0 results better now, but it takes forever downloading from 1 host. Uploading has changed some. Where as, I use to see just the number of slots I allow uploading from me. Now I see the proper amount of slots, plus a ton of others in 'queue', atleast 10 always. I only allow three slots and 1 upload at a time.

The download speed that you can get depends on the host too...what their connection speed really is (some people will set the wrong connection speed because they think it's going to improve their download speed) & how many upload slots they've allowed. Some people will allow way too many upload slots for their bandwidth & so each person downloading from them finds it really slow.

Oh ok, I see. You would think people would try to make LW work the most efficiently for the cpu and connection speed. I found out a lot just reading thru these different threads in the forum.

By the way, your sig is totally right in my case. I can't get nothing done from sitting in front of this square screen all day.