aria2 is a utility for downloading files.
It supports downloading a file from HTTP(S)/FTP/SFTP and BitTorrent at the same time, while the data downloaded from HTTP(S)/FTP/SFTP is uploaded to the BitTorrent swarm.
Using Metalink’s chunk checksums, aria2 automatically validates chunks of data while downloading a file like BitTorrent.
Features include:
- Multi-Connection Download. aria2 can download a file from multiple sources/protocols and tries to utilize your maximum download bandwidth. Really speeds up your download experience. Download files through HTTP(S)/FTP/SFTP/BitTorrent.
- HTTP/1.1 implementation.
- HTTP Proxy support.
- HTTP BASIC authentication support.
- HTTP Proxy authentication support.
- Well-known environment variables for proxy: http_proxy, https_proxy, ftp_proxy, all_proxy and <cono_proxy.
- HTTP gzip, deflate content encoding support.
- Lightweight. aria2 doesn’t require much memory and CPU time. When disk cache is off, the physical memory usage is typically 4MiB (normal HTTP/FTP downloads) to 9MiB (BitTorrent downloads). CPU usage in BitTorrent with download speed of 2.8MiB/sec is around 6%.
- Fully Featured BitTorrent Client. All features you want in BitTorrent client are available: DHT, PEX, MSE/PSE, Encryption, Magnet URI, Web-Seeding, Selective Downloads, Local Peer Discovery, Multi-Tracker, and UDP tracker.
- Metalink Enabled. aria2 supports The Metalink Download Description Format (aka Metalink v4), Metalink version 3 and Metalink/HTTP. Metalink offers the file verification, HTTP/FTP/SFTP/BitTorrent integration and the various configurations for language, location, OS, etc.
- Remote Control. aria2 supports RPC interface to control the aria2 process. The supported interfaces are JSON-RPC (over HTTP and WebSocket) and XML-RPC.
- Load Cookies from file using the Firefox3 format, Chromium/Google Chrome and the Mozilla/Firefox (1.x/2.x)/Netscape format.
- Save Cookies in the Mozilla/Firefox (1.x/2.x)/Netscape format.
- Custom HTTP Header support.
- Persistent Connections support.
- FTP/SFTP through HTTP Proxy
- Download/Upload speed throttling.
- JSON-RPC (over HTTP and WebSocket)/XML-RPC interface.
- Run as a daemon process.
- Selective download in multi-file torrent/Metalink.
- Chunk checksum validation in Metalink.
- Can disable segmented downloading in Metalink.
- Netrc support.
- Configuration file support.
- Download URIs found in a text file or stdin and the destination directory and output file name can be specified optionally.
- Parameterized URI support.
- IPv6 support with Happy Eyeballs.
- Disk cache to reduce disk activity.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Website: aria2.github.io
Support: Documentation, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Tatsuhiro Tsujikawa, Ross Smith II, Nils Maier, and many other contributors
License: GNU General Public License version 2
aria2 is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Alternatives to curl | Alternatives to Wget | Return to Command line HTTP Clients
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