up2date, mirror repositories, and performance

[Martin Alderson]

On 18 Feb 2004, at 22:16, seth vidal wrote:

>
>> 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.

Ok, it would mean running bittorrent alongside thttp. Not a huge drain 
of resources.

>
>> 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.

sorry, but what planet are you from? I downloaded a 350MB file today 
off bittorrent: Torrent size: 7.1KB. Most of this is hash data, so it 
scales with filesize. A 10MB file would have a torrent size of around 
2KB, if that. It only starts getting into the megabyte zone with 
multi-gigabyte files.

>
>> 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.


Sorry but if it means 20MB that the mirrors don't have to provide (IE: 
from users upstream connections) it is a huge success IMO.

>
> 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.
Martin Alderson,
IntechHosting

Email: martin at intechhosting.co.uk
Web: http://www.intechhosting.co.uk