I can't find it now, but I have read an article about a guy who wrote a script to ping speedtest once/minute. It made a clear, measurable difference in his download rate from other sites as long as he kept the script running.
Yep! Another commenter mentioned writing a script to do this. I would very much appreciate it if you could try to find the search terms to locate that article and post the article as a reply. I would appreciate it very much!