Using bit torrent to retrieve RPMs for updates

[Alexandre Strube]

Em Qui, 2004-02-26 às 22:16, Konstantin Ryabitsev escreveu:

> 1. Bittorrent is highly inefficient for a large collection of small 
> files. You will have to start a separate tracker item for each rpm, 

Which can be automated

> and for some of them the amount of traffic generated just tracking 
> the p2p clients will outweigh the savings of using bittorrent. I 
> would imagine that several thousands of tracker items would also be 
> quite processor-intensive.

processor intensive, it may be, but what is more expensive, cpu power or
network bandwidth? And we see everyday ordinary computers serving
thousand of files trough small connections like ISDN. Take a look at
those pirated movies and mp3 repositories..

> 2. You have to specifically punch holes in the firewall for 
> bittorrent -- not one, but a range of ports, actually. Something 
> most people will not do, so they will be constantly leeching.

This is bad. But you will discuss later about the mirrors, and this
seems interesting. Inspite of the fact that some people leeches p2p, the
network still works ok. This can be proved by taking a look at kazaa,
emule and those kind of p2p networks.

> 3. Yum runs as root, so you suddenly have a very large amount of 
> code (yum+bittorrent libs) listening as root for incoming 
> connections. Yikes. Alternatively, you'd have to fork a downloader 
> process and communicate with it using some methods. Either way is 
> painful.

This is not good. But why wouldn't run download process as another user
and using only rpm as root?

> As you see, bittorrent is not very beneficial. However, a 
> bittorent-like system used by *mirrors* could be of benefit. E.g. 
> the client-side connects to the main server and says "I want 
> foo-1.0-1.i386.rpm". The server then returns:

This sounds preety good. It would increase overall speed and distribute
the overload much better.

> 2. How to keep the list of mirrors current? Should they stay 
> constantly connected to the main server a la bittorrent clients? 
> Should they use some other bittorent-like protocol for syncing with 
> each-other?

I though about using the mirrors as bittorrent clients, yes. It's not
perfect, but this would improve speed and will balance the load in a way
much better than it is today.

-- 
[]s

Alexandre Ganso 
500 FOUR vermelha - Diretor Steel Goose Moto Group