> error log said something like "incorrect file size

Weird - the disconnection should have been logged. I'll 
check that for the next release (maybe a bad error handling)

> any longer than before, but still claimed to fail "after 
> 999 retries".

If the network connection failed, the retries will all fail 
(there is no delay between retries yet)

> PROBLEM #2:  How can they be current if they're 
> incomplete? 

This seems to be a bug : when a disconnection occurs, the 
error is silently ignored by the engine, and the file is 
validated in the cache. I will definitely recheck this 
part, and especially the handling of broken files!