Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Re: autoredirect for savannah downloads

[Karl Berry]

    > to determine which mirror is "best" from your location (of course the
    > "location" is not permanent in some cases, which is why you could run
    > a certain command to reconfigure your sources.list).  (I don't
    > remember the name of the package and never used it, sorry.)

    netselect-apt :)

Thanks.  I recall hearing of it, although I've never looked at it.  I
surmise that it runs on the user's machine and does a
download/traceroute/whatever to the various Debian mirrors to figure out
the nearest one.

We don't have the luxury of running code on the client in the case of
the ftpmirror multiplexer.  The redirection selection is being done
within the web server in Winnipeg (or wherver), and all the information
we have is the client IP address.  There is no practical way for a third
party to determine the quickest way from one arbitrary place on the
Internet (the client) to the another arbitrary place (the mirror), as
far as I know, using the http protocol.  (And of course the ftp protocol
doesn't have the concept of "redirect" at all.)


ftp vs. http was also mentioned.  With TeX Live, we found that ftp-only
mirrors were unusable for a significant fraction of users, possibly a
majority.  (Problems with firewalls, passive vs. active, etc.)
Therefore the multiplexer simply ignores all ftp mirrors and returns
only http mirrors.  I know that can be slower/worse in some cases, but
not as many as have impossible problems with ftp.

Although we could allow ftp mirrors in the case of ftpmirror.gnu.org (or
the putative ftpmirror.nongnu.org), I wouldn't recommend it.  Life is
too short to answer all the users saying "it doesn't work".

karl