File test.py is

#!/usr/bin/env python
import urllib2
print urllib2.urlopen('ftp://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/delegated-ripencc-extended-latest').read()

When I issue

python test.py > out.txt

, I get file about 100KB in size, the beginning of the actual file. I repeated it a hundred times, and almost every time I get 98305 byte file, and a couple of times a 49153 bytes or 188417 bytes file.

When I replace urllib2 with urllib in test.py, I get full (4 MB) file.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Python 2.7.3 (from default Ubuntu repository, up-to-date as of 4-june-2012) and slow, 64KB/s, Internet connection.

However, I asked my friend with Windows and faster connection to check it, and he got partial download as well, while he had another size of partial file (50109 bytes). I do not know his OS ant Python versions.