[divisortheory]

They should have one server which can handle two hundred to three hundred thousand connections which basically does nothing except route you and queue you and keep track of download server's status. Download servers can inform this server when their status changes and then routing server can eventually send you to the appropraite server.

When you first click the button to update, it can say "connecting to update server." and connect to the routing server. The routing server could respond to the client with a queue position, and the client could simply sit there, connected to the routing server indefinitely while it waits to be queued in to the download. Frankly this would not be that hard and I see no technical reason why it can't be implemented other than laziness perhaps. Furthermore, they could even display your position to you as it gets updated, so you have an approximate idea how much longer it's going to be.