I have been using bittorent for ages. Have never had a firewall problem, had great speeds in DL and UL. Now I am getting firewall problems and getting shitty DL speeds. Yet I have not changed anything on my PC. So the question is, is it possible for my ISP to limit/block ports.....which inturn would be creating my problems??? Or could there be something else causing the problems??

have you installed Service Pack 2 for WinXP? or has your computer done it for you? It has a built in firewall that will cause conflicts.

to find out just right click on your My Computer icon and choose properties. Under "System" it should tell you what SP you are running. If you do have SP2 you will need to go into your controll panel and turn off the Windows Firewall.

Yeah, that aint it......cause I have always had the newer version of windows that had the firewall already, and I had already configured the firewall to work properly and bypass the selected ports.

Thanks for ya help MF

Yes, ISP's can and do do that. Make sure the port's open on your router--and you may actually want to try a different port altogether.