I'm a civil engineer, so this topic was really interesting to read. Since this new method has calculation on intersection and it's iterative, it made me think about the Cross Hardy method for solving a looped pipe network, it is similar in a way. I studied it in uni and it was really popular before ...

I have the same issue described by OP.
My friend has a server with peer-to-peer option turned off, and I have a relatively slow upload speed compared to other people playing on the server (ADSL download: 600kB/s; upload: 50kB/s)