On 12 March 2010 16:42, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-03-12 at 14:21 +0000, Fred Williams wrote: > > On 12 March 2010 14:08, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallag...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > The yum fastestmirror plugin (yum-plugin-fastestmirror) claims > > to > > evaluate the speed of a bunch of repo mirrors and use the > > fastest one > > relative to the user's location. > > > > However AFAIK what it *actually* does is make a test > > connection to the > > to the candidate mirrors and order them according to response > > time, > > which in many cases is dominated by network latency, which can > > distort > > the results. For well-connected user machines in first-world > > countries > > it probably doesn't matter much, and may have the beneficial > > effect of > > spreading the load over a wider range of mirrors, but for > > those of us in > > a less privileged position it can matter a lot. Ironically, > > these are > > the cases where such an optimization could do the most good. > > > > A case in point: I live in Venezuela and on several recent > > occasions yum > > decided that my closest repo was in Puerto Rico, which as the > > packet > > flies is probably true. However the b/w I got as a result was > > around 2 > > or 3kbps. > > > > I tried renewing the mirror cache. No difference (ping times > > tend not to > > vary much). > > > > I then manually edited the /var/cache/yum/timedhosts.txt file > > to bias > > the results against the mirror yum was choosing (I made it > > worst rather > > than best). Oddly, it again made no difference! It seems > > there's a > > cunning hidden cache of these results that I don't know about. > > Finally I > > disabled the plugin completely and got decent b/w without it. > > > > Perhaps we should be considering some kind of BitTorrent > > version of the > > repos in which the mirrors are seeds and the users are > > leeches, though I > > realize that this is harder than it looks, particularly when > > taking into > > account the synching of the mirrors themselves. > > > > poc > > > > -- > > users mailing list > > users@lists.fedoraproject.org > > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users > > Guidelines: > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > > > > Perhaps not so difficult - though I've never used them myself, I > > recall that in the Debian, if not Ubuntu (Sometimes hard to tell) > > repositories are some packages that allow for bittorrent fetching of > > deb packages - perhaps if they're still relevent and working, they > > could be used as a base to create a means of implementing the same, > > maybe as a plugin for Yum or similar. > > Theoretically, I think the only main differences are the download > > protocol. HTTP/FTP or BitTorrent. Once downloaded the package can > > still be used in the same way, there's no difference there. > > The main downside I see to it is that those users on an ISP which > > throttles BitTorrent will suffer, and have to go back to standard > > downloads, but if both are provided, then no issue. Or at least very > > little. > > Just my 2p. Or 2c, depending on your currency. > > Interesting. I'll see what I can can find on BT use in the Debian/Ubuntu > world. > > poc > > -- > users mailing list > users@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users > Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > A quick search for 'deb' on the Debian Package database returned a lot of results but the specific one that matches would be this one, I believe: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/debtorrent At a glance, it's hard to say how useful it'll be, even as an example to work from.
-- users mailing list users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
