Transmission

[chuck adams]

using transmission to download a large torrent.
going just fine except for the occasional slowdown.
here are some observations:

1.  if the number of peers and download seeds gets
low, if i do a pause and then restart the numbers
increase, telling me that updates on the tracker
are not being done or done at lengthy intervals.

2.  if i bring up the properties display and show
peers, there are some seeds that have 100% of the
files, but they have a lower case 'd' instead of
'D' indicating that they aren't allowing me to
download from them.  How am i being blocked?
Is it some additional ports that I need, or are
they purposely doing this?  Inquiring minds
want to know.

chuck