X.Org Board Meetings: Mar. 2 Summary, Mar. 16 Agenda

[Eberhard Moenkeberg]

Hi,

On Wed, 10 Mar 2010, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:

>> We could advise "please choose your nearest secondary mirror, and if you
>> are in doubt about the integrity, try after that to rsync your repository
>> again against rsync://ftp.x.org/ftp/ or any tier-1 mirror".
>>
>> This way traffic could get delegated to new helpers - in case we will need
>> that once.
>
> Thanks to the generous bandwidth provided by MIT & PSU to the X.Org &
> FreeDesktop.Org machines, we don't actually need to delegate traffic.
>
> (Modularization probably helps a bit too, since most downloads aren't
> the multi-hundred MB monolith, but much smaller modules, most of which
> change and need new downloads much more rarely.)
>
> We've not had issues with bandwidth on our end, so could live without mirrors,
> but we also recognize that mirrors in other parts of the world, especially
> those parts where there is mandatory nationwide Internet filtering or
> low-bandwidth links to North America, are useful for people in those areas
> to improve their bandwidth or reduce their latency in downloading, so while
> we're not anxious about needing to find more sites to mirror us, we want to be
> helpful in allowing others to provide them.

Yes, another aspect to officially mention tier-2 mirrors.

I am not sure that it absolutely is as you say "we could live without 
mirrors" - think of the moments of major releases and a possibly growing 
"end-user" community.

Novell/SUSE is using costly Nacamar payed bandwidth services at the 
big release moments since SUSE got part of Novell - my guess: they need it 
only because they had neglected to recognize the "foreign" infrastructure 
they could have used instead / can use instead in time.

Service your helpers in time, and they will help you to service once you 
need it.


Viele Gruesse
Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke at gwdg.de, em at kki.org)

-- 
Eberhard Moenkeberg
Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur
E-Mail: emoenke at gwdg.de      Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551
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