axel

Meet axel – it's like a turbo booster for your downloads. Instead of just one connection, it uses several at once to pull files from FTP or HTTP servers, making things much faster. While it's got a bunch of cool tricks up its sleeve, a favorite is -n, where you tell it how many connections to use.

Check out this example: We're using -a for a neat and tidy progress bar and -o to give our downloaded file a fresh new name.

axel -a -n 20 -o report_axel.pdf https://www.offensive-security.com/reports/penetration-testing-sample-report-2013.pdf

axel running a download, leveraging 20 connections

For those playing close attention, yep, that URL is a sample pen-testing report from the folks at Offensive Security, or OffSec as they're now called. Fun fact: I stumbled upon this tool while grinding through my OSCP a couple years back.

Shoutout to OffSec for the awesome tip!