up2date, mirror repositories, and performance

[seth vidal]

> Not true, IMO. It requires very little to add a Bittorrent seed to an 
> existing Apache server (mod_bittorrent, IRC) so why not do it? Sure, 
> you have a bit of overhead, but it would be worth it. You could even 
> have a BitTorrent service that runs in the background and shares the 
> updates.

a couple of points -most mirrors don't run apache - it doesn't scale. IT
doesn't work as well as thttpd or boa or tux for LOTS of static files.

so mod_bittorrent is just A BIT of overhead - it's actually quite a lot.



> That's the only plausible explanation that I can think of that would 
> mean BitTorrent would not be efficient (not enough users sharing at one 
> time - but there will always be at least one - the normal HTTP server).

there is also the problem is that when the .torrent file is a
considerable percentage of the total file size.



> Also, update filesizes can sometimes be more than 20MB which is more 
> than reasonable to spread the load with other users.

and I'm not convinced you'll see a boost from 20MB and bittorrent.

we need to FIX the mirroring system. It has to be brought under more
rigid standards and controls. THAT is how we solve this problem.

-sv