Are you sure you haven't reached your monthly limit. It's easy to do. Recheck your telstra (Bigpond isn't it) account page & usage for the month. This is nearing the end of the month now.

If nowhere near the end of the 20 GB limit, then keep searching for sources. Speeds are usually dependent on the hosts. So re-searching the same files will normally help dramatically.

Also beware of who you are downlding from. If you see it's a RAZA user for example, then don't be surprised to get slow & unreliable speeds. You can right-click the top of the download window headings to choose to show Vendor/version so you can see this. You can do the same for the search window. RAZA = ShareAza, which is a multi-network program that leeches off the gnutella network. It often uses most of its upload capacity on other networks.