Download Servers are ridiculously fast. They saturate my 10mbps line and have heard they saturate much faster lines too.
Multiplayer is much better with the new patch. Depends on you. I have a year old router and never needed to configure anything or open ports. The NAT punch through just worked. 99% of people work with their ports forwarded. The problem that happens is before the day 2 patch if someone who didn't work joined your game, you had no way to kick them, but they could never join. This meant no one else could join because they need to connect to everyone, including the non-functional person, before entering the game lobby. Now you can kick that person. Not sure if this works in pantheon yet, but they are very actively addressing issues. The online experience in general is also much improved with the new servers.