Implementing a Web Downloader in bash

While looking for a pure bash implementation of wget or curl I came across this post at LinuxQuestions.org. I haven't tried it yet but I'm trying to figure out if there's a more system-agnostic way of doing the same thing. Keen readers will notice the script uses the /dev/tcp/hostname/port "file" to make a connection to a remote host. Based on what I know that's a Solaris-specific way of connecting to a remote host. I'm thinking of something using telnet and the like that can download binary files as well. I have a couple of ideas and I'll update once I've either found a solution or given up and switched to perl.