Although its description states that it is specially fit for byte-critical systems, axel can be installed anywhere and used not only to download multiple files simultaneously over HTTP/FTP links but also to speed them up as well.
Chrome Axel Downloadl
As we mentioned earlier, axel is not just another download tool. It accelerates HTTP and FTP downloads by using multiple connections to retrieve files from the destination and can also be configured to use multiple mirrors as well.
Last but not least, axel differs from other Linux download accelerators in that it puts all the data in a single file at download time, as opposed to writing data to separate files and joining them at a later stage.
You can configure axel using /etc/axelrc and pass further desired options in the command line when you invoke it. The configuration file is well documented but we will review the most useful options here:
num_connections is the maximum number of connections that axel will attempt to start. The recommended value (4) is enough for most cases and is given mostly on the grounds of respect for other FTP users. Please note that some servers may not even allow multiple connections.
We will now compare the download times from HTTP and FTP links using wget and axel. You can choose any file of any size, but for simplicity, we will download 100 MB files available from:
In this article, we have explained how to use axel, an FTP / HTTP download accelerator, and showed how it performs faster than other programs such as wget because it being able to open multiple simultaneous connections to remote servers.
We hope that what we have shown here motivates you to try axel. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions or comments about this article using the form below. We always look forward to receiving feedback from our readers.
I tried axel upon Gufran's recommendation but it hugely disappointed me. My goal was to find a CLI replacement for DownThemAll because it hogs the CPU and hard disc and slows the entire system down even on an 8-core Mac Pro. I also wanted a multithreaded replacement for wget and curl, not some kludge of a script that runs multiple instances of these. So I searched further and found what I think right now is the ultimate most modern multithreaded CLI downloader there is -- aria2. The big problem I had with axel was that it 'faked' downloading files over SSL. I caught it doing that with tcdump. It was downloading https links as ordinary http. That really pissed me off and if I hadn't checked, I would have had a false sense of security. I doubt that many people know about this serious breach in security. Getting back to aria2, it is more advanced than any other downloader. It supports HTTP(S), FTP, BitTorrent, and Metalink protocols, is multiplatform, and is a download guerrilla. It maxes out my ISP's bandwidth with no load on the CPU or hard disk, unlike DTA. The man page is gigantic. I will never use more than a few of its many options. And oh, BTW, I checked its SSL performance with tcdump and it is solid, not fake. I wrote a script that mimics DTA's behavior, if not its convenience.
Install axel download accelerator for Ubuntu Linux. How to use axel downloader on Ubuntu Systems. Axel is a command line download accelerator for Linux Ubuntu Systems. Axel enables faster apt-get installations and upgrades. 2ff7e9595c
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