Usually I use ncftp to transfer files around, as it has cool recursive put & get features. But recently, I needed a command line ftp client with some form of rate limiting. This is because, over 100mbit LAN, files can come across very fast (10MB/s), which will result in a disk getting slammed, and even in DMA mode, the CPU getting sucked away.

A quick search in google for “linux ftp client limit speed” revealed a little utility called ‘axel‘ (A light download accelerator for Linux.).

$ axel -s 500000 http://example.com/somedisk.iso

Will download the somedisk.iso file at 500KB/s.

Axel has a few other features too, like max connections, etc.

The well know ‘wget’ also has a rate limiting feature “–limit-rate=RATE”, but I forgot about that parameter until after I wrote this post.. and besides.. typing “-s 500000″ is a lot quicker then “–limit-rate=500000″..

I guess this post is more of a note to myself, rather then being a informative/useful contribution to the Internet blogging world.. Oh well..