Having only downloaded 11mb in 8 hours, I decided to see whether there's a way I can not use Blizzard's downloader. I look at the \World of Warcraft\logs\BackgroundDownload.log file and find where it is getting it's torrent file, and finds this:

You can just enter that URL into your favorite bittorent client and download. I don't guarentee it'll be any faster, but it is different.

Or you could follow the directions here: http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww0819p

Blizzard uses some non-standard ports you have to open up on your firewall. I've never had a problem since.

I generally grab the patches from www.3dgamers.com, which is one of the faster "queued" servers. Seems most people still think fileplanet/fileshack for their patch downloading, so the lines on 3dgamers are usually pretty short.

Well, the background downloader throttles your incoming and outgoing to a very very low amount. This is BY DESIGN, and is the result of Blizz's consumer base whining incessantly to blizz. If you just want to cownload the upcoming patch data quick, go to your cache folder, and run the torrent file in there with whatever bittorrent client you want, and appreciated fast, unthrottled speeds. But dont get annoyed with blizz that the trickle downloader is too slow, when they made it slow for a reason.

Just popped it into uTorrent just for kicks, download completed in 20 minutes. Why leave that silly downloader on for weeks when you can just download it in a tiny fraction of that time? I still don't see why they limited the speed on the background downloader, ah well, more peers for me to leech from I guess.

I found this to be completely opposite of my experience. The Blizzard Downloader is a barebones bittorrent client, lacking in any throttling abilities (upload or download). When downloading the PTR data, the client consumed almost all of my bandwidth, with approx 65% devoted to upload. Other computers on my home network were unable to use the internet at all.

One of the main reasons behind using a different bittorrent client is the ability to fine tune the bandwidth usage.

Vesp, your right, but not on precaching the patch. The downloader in question right now, is used for precaching the patch data, and therefore is throttled at very low numbers. I average 3k up/down with it. This is designed to run while your logged in and playing. The PTR client, or the patch, when its released will not be throttled, and will use all of your upload you have, while squeezing as much download as possible.

It downloads/uploads very slowly so it can run in the background. Hence the name :Background Downloader".

The idea is that it takes a week or two to finish DLing the file, but you never notice the download as it only uses a tiny amount of your bandwidth.

Now, having said that I still download damn slow on patch day when its no longer a "background downloader" so I just find a mirror and DL my patches there =).

I will definately try to use my standard bitorrent client next time, also be a nice thing as I only need to open the one range of ports and not two.