0.1 Upload Speed while Downloading, cannot connect to peers, etc

[captaincaliena]

Hello, I'm really new to this whole torrent downloading thing, and up until now it was going pretty well. Today, I started experiencing slow download speeds, 0.0 - 0.2 upload speeds, and the strangest thing yet, the number of my seeders and peers keeps switching. I'll explain that in a second. But for right now, here's some of the basic info:

Windows XP SP2

Norton Internet Security 2007 - Firewalled (always has been since day one, never been a problem)

Modem (hardwired): 2Wire 2701HG-B

ISP: AT&T/SBC DSL

Speed test results:

DL: 1269 Kb/s

UL: 300 Kb/s

UTorrent ver: 1.6.1

Network icon: green

Port Forwarded correctly

Set to xx/256k

Upload Limit: 22kB/s

Connections per torrent: 70

Max active torrents: 2

Upload slots: 3

Connections (global): 130

Max active downloads: 1

I hope thats enough information, first of all. If you need anything else please let me know and I'll do my best to provide the info

So here's my bag of issues:

-While I download, I can only reach a max of 0.2 on my uploads.

-Some torrents will download slowly (even when there are plenty of seeders)

-Torrent DL speeds will change DRASTICALLY (I'm talking over 100 down to 20, maybe even less)

-Number of seeders and leechers switch. For example, if I'm downloading a file from Demonoid and it says 43 seeds and 7 leechers, when I open the torrent in uTorrent, it will show up as 43 seeds and 7 peers, but will unexpectedly switch so it then says 7 seeders and 43 peers. This is really strange to me.

-Cannot connect to peers to seed or can only connect to one peer

-Torrents will unexpectedly quit seeding altogether.

Any help that anyone can provide is EXTREMELY appreciated. Like I said, I'm a newbie, so I'm pretty much completely retarded at all of this. I'm really really sorry if I'm missing something really obvious! Please don't beat me! hehe

[Ultima]

Have you enabled Protocol Encryption in Preferences > BitTorrent? More importantly, though, is your firewall issue, which probably has the biggest effect on your speeds.