Re: Pointing ftp.gnome.org somewhere (Re: master.gnome.org and FTP server restructurement)

[Mattias Wadenstein <maswan acc umu se>]

On 10 Mar 2001, Owen Taylor wrote:

>
> Tomas Ogren <stric ing umu se> writes:
>
> > After discussing the matter with ftp.gnome.org == master.gnome.org and
> > anonftp being disabled with Martin on irc, we came to the conclusion
> > that a possible solution is to point ftp.gnome.org at ftp.acc.umu.se
> > (which is ftp.se.debian.org right now too) in Umeå, Sweden.
[snip]
>
> Hmmm, I'm pretty sure a majority of our traffic is currently
> from North America.

A quick look at some statistics from before anonftp access was cut of
shows that about half the traffic (perhaps a little more than half) came
from North America. Of course, that is just estimates from the TLD
summary, unresloved IPs could be anywhere and com isn't 100% north
america. http://www.acc.umu.se/~maswan/util/tmp/xferstat/xferstats.html
is where I have the statisics up now, it will probably be gone in a couple
of weeks.

[snip FTP performance test]
> So, quite decent transfer rates from North America.
>
> But from a good-network-citizen point of view, if most of our traffic
> is from North America, it seems that we probably should try to have
> ftp.gnome.org in North America.

Well, it isn't that much traffic to begin with for us, or our network.
Assuming the xferlogs that I got from ftp.gnome.org are representative,
we've had single users in North America pulling much more in one day from
us than the entire daily traffic from ftp.gnome.org.

Besides, most of the traffic across the transatlantic links is in the
other direction. Except that from ftp.sunet.se (~100 gigs/day to USA). :)

> I think the first thing we need to do is to make sure all
> interested mirrors have the current rsync password and are rsyncing,
> and we have their contact addresses.
>
> Then we'll be better in a better position to evaluate
>
>  - How much spare bandwidth we have at the main gnome.org site

Having master.gnome.org on a different network connection than the public
sites is probably a good idea, so that mirrors always can get in and
update decently fast. This might not be an issue in normal operation, but
with major releases this can be quite important.

>  - Whether there are interested mirrors in North America with
>    comparable connectivity.

Sure. But I think that one important thing is that we can have this up and
running today. And doing a pretty good job at it too. If a better
candidate would turn up a couple of months later, it isn't all that hard
to repoint the name, right?

> But certainly we appreciate the offer, and probably should
> at least make umu.acc.se ftp.eu.gnome.org.

Sure, that would work too. I just thought that it would be a nice thing to
have a publicly accessible ftp.gnome.org. And if it is in Sweden, well.
that is just a reason for North American users to learn how to find a
mirror. :)

/Mattias Wadenstein - guessing on bounces from at least one or two of
those mailinglists