Axel - A light download accelerator for Linux.

Axel does the same thing any other accelerator does: it opens more than one HTTP/FTP connection per download and each connection transfers its own, separate, part of the file. It may sound weird, but it works very well in practice ...... 

Install on ubuntu

# On Ubuntu.
sudo apt-get install axel

Example:

axel  http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/perl/Geo-IP-1.28.tar.gz

MAN:

AXEL(1)                                                                                                                  AXEL(1)

NAME
       Axel - A light download accelerator for Linux.

SYNOPSIS
       axel [OPTIONS] url1 [url2] [url...]

DESCRIPTION
       Axel  is a program that downloads a file from a FTP or HTTP server through multiple connection, each connection downloads
       its own part of the file.

       Unlike most other programs, Axel downloads all the data directly to the destination file, using  one  single  thread.  It
       just saves some time at the end because the program doesn’t have to concatenate all the downloaded parts.

OPTIONS
       One  argument  is required, the URL to the file you want to download. When downloading from FTP, the filename may contain
       wildcards and the program will try to resolve the full filename. Multiple URL’s can be specified as well and the  program
       will use all those URL’s for the download. Please note that the program does not check whether the files are equal.

       Other options:

       --max-speed=x, -s x
              You  can  specify  a  speed (bytes per second) here and Axel will try to keep the average speed around this speed.
              Useful if you don’t want the program to suck up all of your bandwidth.

       --num-connections=x, -n x
              You can specify an alternative number of connections here.

       --output=x, -o x
              Downloaded data will be put in a local file with the same name, unless you specify a  different  name  using  this
              option. You can specify a directory as well, the program will append the filename.

       --search[=x], -S[x]
              Axel  can  do  a search for mirrors using the filesearching.com search engine. This search will be done if you use
              this option. You can specify how many different mirrors should be used for the download as well.

              The search for mirrors can be time-consuming because the program tests every server’s speed, and it checks whether
              the file’s still available.

       --no-proxy, -N
              Don’t  use  any  proxy  server to download the file. Not possible when a transparent proxy is active somewhere, of
              course.

       --verbose
              If you want to see more status messages, you can use this option. Use it more than once if you want to see more.

       --quiet, -q
              No output to stdout.

       --alternate, -a
              This will show an alternate progress indicator. A bar displays the progress and status of the  different  threads,
              along with current speed and an estimate for the remaining download time.

       --help, -h
              A brief summary of all the options.

       --version, -V
              Get version information.

NOTE
       Long  (double  dash)  options  are supported only if your platform knows about the getopt_long call. If it does not (like
       *BSD), only the short options can be used.

RETURN VALUE
       The program returns 0 when the download was succesful, 1 if something really went wrong and 2 if the download was  inter‐
       rupted. If something else comes back, it must be a bug..

EXAMPLES
       axel ftp://ftp.{be,nl,uk,de}.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
            v2.4/linux-2.4.17.tar.bz2

       This will use the Belgian, Dutch, English and German kernel.org mirrors to download a Linux 2.4.17 kernel image.

       axel -S4 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/
                 linux-2.4.17.tar.bz2

       This will do a search for the linux-2.4.17.tar.bz2 file on filesearching.com and it’ll use the four (if possible) fastest
       mirrors for the download.  (Possibly including ftp.kernel.org)

       (Of course, the commands are a single line, but they’re too long to fit on one line in this page.)

FILES
       /etc/axelrc System-wide configuration file

       ~/.axelrc Personal configuration file

       These files are not documented in a man-page, but the example file which comes with the program contains enough  informa‐
       tion, I hope. The position of the system-wide configuration file might be different.

COPYRIGHT
       Axel is Copyright 2001-2002 Wilmer van der Gaast.

BUGS
       I’m sure there are some bugs left somewhere, please tell me about them and I will try to fix them.

       A  known  bug  is  that the program does weird things when downloading using hundreds of connections. Well, just don’t do
       that.

AUTHORS
       Wilmer van der Gaast. (lintux@lintux.cx)