I have the exact same issue (heck I may even go to the same University as the poster above). My school has implemented a block on Torrents, and they are employing deep packet inspection to find them and block them. So forcing a encrypted connection to download won't work.

There needs to be a alternate way to acquire the patches.
This problem is made worse by SE going to the fan sites and requesting that they NOT host patches so I'm stuck until they are posted to "other" locations.

Torrents are a good way to save bandwidth for the host company but really there needs to be a fall-back option.