This may be obvious to some, however :

I have been trying to get through for the last day or so and finally figured out a way to do it -- keep trying, but everytime you manage to connect to the server and make a step, save the url and load to that next time you try. Going step by step like this took me about twenty minutes. Once in, use bittorrent. I am now downloading at 250 - 300 k with 50 seeds. Done in about 45 min total. Nice.