jdbon - Where is the source? I suspect you're right an informed programmer (maybe even an uninformed one - I'm willing to give it a shot) could do it.
mighty - rather than request one file, wait for it to arrive in full, request the next, wait for it... pipelining involves requesting each file immediately as soon as you know you're going to need it, without waiting for the one that's currently on its way to finish. On high-latency connections, it can speed things up somewhat.