While idling in #archlinux on freenode, I came across this neat little trick to speed up downloads in pacman.
First install the package axel:
pacman -Sy axel
Then, edit /etc/pacman.conf:
XferCommand = /usr/bin/axel –output=%o %u
The next time you update/download a new package, Pacman will now use axel to download the necessary files. Axel will try and make multiple connections thereby taking less time overall to download.
