im no tech expert just someone who has had theses issues in the past, you need to look in to you antivirus software settings and look for the fire wall settings, you should be able to browse for the dopecoin qt and add it as an exception, connections also reduce if you have more than one wallet open, i had verium and dope open and verium had all the connections 
In fact, yes, my firewall is good according to what you are telling.
The thing that I learned a long time ago was that the number of connection is not really so important
and does NOT affect the staking.
Also, I have 12 wallet staking simultaneously, with good number of connections for most.
Get good staking and even identic staking independantly of other wallets staking.
This is actually the way it should be.
My issue here with DOPE is that, even if i have connections, and wallet opened all the time,
it cannot be in sync now.... this is the issue.
I will probably delete all files except wallet.dat and start sycing from scratch....
IS THERE a BOOTSTRAP file available?
I did not get an answer when I posted last time, and did not get a link for a bootstrap file....
And my wallet is doing the same again....
connected 24/7 and still unable to keep beeing on sync....
Coudl the dev team come here to help?
I need to fix this behavior and get a bootstrap to speed up syncing process, please
I now would add as information that I deleted all files except wallet.dat...
... I get only 1 connection (I have a .conf file....
... and the wallet does not start the syncing process
It just seems stuck...
please HELP
