As for the network connectivity, most people are behind a firewall or NAT, thus they severely limit the outgoing connections on the wallet. This means that there are only a few nodes that connect all those other nodes together. Once a node has reached it's limit of connections, they stop accepting new users until an existing user disconnects. In some cases there are way more users than 'slots' available on the nodes, which leads to some users not being able to find any available nodes to connect to.
If I run my wallet and want to use it as a node to help this situation, can I change the port and it will still work? I ask this because I have a range of ports that are forwarded in my router.