Curl can accelerate a download of a file by splitting it into parts:
$ man curl |grep -A2 '\--range'
-r/--range <range>
(HTTP/FTP/SFTP/FILE) Retrieve a byte range (i.e a partial docu-
ment) from a HTTP/1.1, FTP or SFTP server or a local FILE.
Splitcurl is a bash wrapper that allows you to specify how many parts to split the download into:
$ ./splitcurl http://mirrors.rutgers.edu/archlinux/iso/2012.10.06/archlinux-2012.10.06-dual.iso 100
Downloading archlinux-2012.10.06-dual.iso in 100 parts: 435159040 / 435159040 bytes @ 22366 kb/s (100%).
Files done!
Usage:
splitcurl URL [SPLITNUM(4)]
> Download it! <