Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Restricting the download speed

When there is limited bandwidth with many applications sharing it, a large file can devour all the bandwidth and starve other processes (perhaps interactive users). The wget option -limit-rate will specify the maximum bandwidth for the download job, allowing all applications fair access to the Internet:

$ wget  --limit-rate 20k http://example.com/file.iso

In this command, k (kilobyte) specifies the speed limit. You can also use m for megabyte.

The -quota (or -Q) option specifies the maximum size of the download. wget will stop when the quota is exceeded. This is useful when downloading multiple files to a system with limited space:

$ wget -Q 100m http://example.com/file1 http://example.com/file2