www.portforward.com
select your app and router and it will give you step by step instructions. it probably is a portforwarding issue. i use utorrent, in the lower there is a status bar that shows the network status as either a green yellow or red icon, most clients have simliar utility to check the network status. if yours is green and you still have that low bandwith then its probably just the lack of peers. i was on a fiber optic connection for 3 days last week house sitting, downloaded about 150 gigs and uploaded 100 or so. it was ****** sweet.
oh and get rid of bittorrent, its a memory hog, i highly recommend utorrent