I have seen the glossary here on limewire, but it's still a little confusing for me and maybe other newbies. Could anyone help with the following words -- in plain English?

1. What is a 'bitrate' and does a higher number mean better quality or faster download?

2. What is a 'proxy' and why would I need to change it? (I've seen other threads where people are trying to change theirs.)

3. What is the function of an 'IP address'? I know that each computer has one and it's like an address for each computer, but does it identify me by name, location or how?

4. How do universities and other places succeed in blocking me from using limewire? I've read that there are ways around it, but none seems successful.

5. What affects the speed of my downloads? I've never gotten anything above 2kb/s, with all bars showing green and connected. If I shut down all other windows programs, will that affect the speed? What other little tricks can I use to keep my computer concentrating only on the download (I've been trying to download an audiobook; so far its taken four days).

Thank you very much in advance.

1. bitrate refers to how much music is packed into 1 second, so higher bitrate usually means better quality. However, that means the file is bigger, which takes longer to download.

2. Proxy mean connecting to another computer which handles all your requests. This adds another link in the chain between you and the files, which may slow down your connections.

3. IP addresses don't contain personal info, but somewhere (like your Internet Service Provider), your IP address may be linked to your info.

4. Many ways. . . but too complex to describe quickly here. Search google or wikipedia for "packet preferencing" "p2p throttling" or "port blocking"

5. The available upload bandwidth of the other computer, and your available download bandwidth, and (less so) your computer's ability to process the information.

Re the audiobook, it sounds like you have a slow or very busy host. The easieast possible solution is to do more searches using more specific search terms. As new sources are found (if possible), their combined upload speeds should get the download coming faster