Hello everyone. :->
I've experienced hiccups in my home network many times using p2p networks: eDonkey or Torrent. I was fiddling with settings: decreasing upload, number of connections, changed the router and finally replaced it by little pc box.
I've seen quite nice improvement if downloading just max 2 torrents at once with very limited set of available concurrent connections.
But many times this didn't help, neither better router (with limited time of idle connections set to minimum) nor even new box with Linux installed in role of a router. I realised that this happen more often when specific torrents have many seeds and few times more leechers counted in hundreds. In this case waiting in the cue becomes very long, but network even then is getting hiccups.
How to limit this factor or what is exactly the real bottleneck in this network routine. A modem, a router?
If a router so how to increase the number, the pool of available connections. Is it limited by the protocol specification? In case of a Linux box it has 1GB of RAM instead of plain router with 32MB of operating memory. Where is the limitation? In my case I suspect concurrent connections issue, in the past it was usually overloaded upload on thiner line. Restrictive policy is good for a company, but not for a home users. In my case broadband is based on a cable moden with bandwidth 1.25MB/s download and ~40kB/s upload.
Thank you for any interesting facts and your attention of course.

Thanks Sam for You reply.
I didn't mention about my Linksys with Tomato installed. It is very good choice. I have even found modified Tomato by a guy named Victek? especially tweaked for p2p purposes, however never tried this one (Instead of genuine Tomato, I know that maintenance of Victek release has stopped some time ago) I was playing with its connection settings too. It helped for sure, but now with mini pc box I seek (deserve :p - it consumes more power) for some connection improvements. I'll check what interesting LEAF is hiding. Thanks again.