Jan Prikryl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Quoting Dan Harkless ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> > > the file's size). This feature would enable the writing of cool
> > > scripts to do something like multi-threaded retrieval at file level.
> > [...]
> >
> > Hi, Alec. You're the second person within a few days to ask for such a
> > feature. I've added it to the TODO list.
>
> I would object in this case. While the ability to retrieve only part
> of the file might make sense, we sould have in mind that a tool like
> wget shall behave decently with respect to servers on the other side
> of the connection. I have nothing against starting several wget jobs
> to download data from several sites. Hammering servers by making X
> connections each of them retrieving 1/X of the file in concern doesn't
> look to me as a very good policy.
>
> Has anyone really measured how much can be gained this way, compared
> to, say, persistent http connections? I would say that several partial
> downloads make only sense in case that the http server limits the
> bandwidth for a single connection ...
Oops. I should have explicitly stated what I was thinking when I said I'd
throw that on the TODO. I think being able to specify a range to download
would be feature that'd have a lot of uses, including bandwidth
_conservation_ (e.g. downloading only the last 100K of a 100MB file). It'd
also be helpful for people with those lousy HTTP proxies that throw in
"Transfer interrupted." strings that break the --continue feature.
I agree completely that using this feature to try to speed up a download is
probably misguided in most cases, and can be unfriendly to servers in the
cases where it does work. Therefore I'm not willing to implement the
special-purpose --split option the first guy suggested. If people really
want to do this sort of thing, it'll be up to them to write their own
wrappers for the --range option.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Harkless | To help prevent SPAM contamination,
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