Accelerate Download Speed In Linux Using Axel

Axel is a lightweight command line download accelerator for linux. 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.

Axel tries to accelerate downloads by using multiple connections (possibly to multiple servers) for one download. Because of its size, it might be very useful on bootdisks or other small systems as a wget replacement.

One useful implementation of axel is in the apt-fast tool, a fusion of apt-get and axel to accelerate downloads of packages.

Installation under ubuntu and other debian distros: Open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install axel

Similarly, a graphical frontend axel-kapt is also available for download for GUI lovers. Also, flashgot plugin for firefox lets you make use of axel to download files. I should say, axel is a small yet good download accelerator for linux systems.