Have you ever wondered why Linux is so powerful on the network? Are you fed up of using expensive download accelerators under Windows? Well, this tutorial will teach you how to use Axel. One of the most powerful and fast download accelerators.

I – Introduction

Axel is a small tool that can retrieve files from either FTP or HTTP server through parallel downloads. This means that the file is broken into smaller parts and each part is downloaded separately. Because this is achieved within the main thread, there is no need to merge small pieces at the end. This is one advantage of Axel over other similar programs.

Axel was written in C by Wilmer van der Gaast and was first released in 2001. Surprisingly enough, Axel does not seem to be popular and has no dedicated website.

II- Getting and install Axel

The easiest to get Axel is by Googling it; you will find RPM available for download. On some website you will get the source code. The current stable version is 1.0. The whole source code is less than 50 kbytes!

Compilation
Like any Linux software, the compilation process is very straightforward:

Let us assume you have got the source file: axel-1.0b.tar.gz - which can be downloaded from here: http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/515850/Axel.html

III - Running Axel

Syntax: axel [OPTIONS] url1 [url2] [url...]
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 file name.

--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.
Examples of usage:
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)

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