Connected to many peers but not downloading/uploading to most of them

[onetwothree]

I've been using utorrent for a long time and my downloading speed has always been up to the limit (180+kB/s). However since 2 weeks ago, the speeds have been really low. Most of the time it's less than 1kB/s. I'm connected to a lot of peers (>100) but I'm only download from one or two of them. Each time I get connected to a new peer, a value is shown in the download speed column for a few seconds than it goes blank. It didn't use to be like this, I'm not sure what went wrong. I didn't change anything. The only thing I can think of is that I updated my zonealarm firewall software just before this problem came up. I have since deleted zonealrm but the problem was not resolved.

I have the green tick status icon at the bottom.

My port forwarding status is ok

I'm using ADSL connection and the internet speed test result is 1118/524 Kbps (average)

I've tried testing a torrent from OpenOffice.org, Slackware Linux and Ubuntu Linux. All showed the same problem.

I've also tried trying all the other settings. None help.

What could be causing the problem?

[Ultima]

Your ISP (along with other Singaporean ISPs) throttle BitTorrent. Try enabling Protocol Encryption and selecting xx/512k in the Speed Guide, but that's probably as best as I'm able to suggest to you. VPNs might be an option, but I don't know enough about using them with BitTorrent (or how our ISP deals with them) to be able recommend it to you.

[onetwothree]

I have enabled Protocol Encryption all along. I tried selecting xx/512k in the speed guide but the speed still remain really low. I don't think the problem is because my ISP throttle BitTorrent because I've been having good speed all along until 2 weeks ago.

[Ultima]

Try searching the forums for singnet then.