[Cojage]

I'm new here. I'm a computer guy but I always used Usenet and this is the first time I try to use torrents, ive read up on it but I have a few questions.

First of all does it mean that if I get a lower ratio I get a lower download speed? And I assume that I have to seed just as much gb as I download to get a 1:1 ratio, right?

And it does say firewalled, i've seen the sticky thread and I went to check my ports and it says connection timed out, but I downloaded a torrent from here and it's downloading, at full speed it seems. I have a alcatel router, do I need to open a port for torrenting?