As of the time of writing, Debian's mirrors network has around 330 mirrors serving the archive over http, and around 300 serving it over ftp.
This month alone, 6 more mirrors were added. Other 6 more were added last month.
There are mirrors in 73 countries. All this couldn't be possible without the help of the sponsors.
However, some interesting questions arise: do people actually use those new mirrors? is having so many mirrors worth the extra load put on the primary mirrors?
I would personally answer: no, and maybe.
Blogosphere: When was the last time you took a look at the mirrors list and/or tried to find a mirror that served you better?
I semi-regularly run netselect-apt (every 6 months or so, I'd wager), and after every install, to ensure I get the best mirror experience.
ReplyDeleteI only look at the list when I am running the installer - but then I actually do.
ReplyDeleteI don't run the installer very often, though.
The extensive network of Debian mirrors would have much more value if cdn.debian.net became the default mirror on all systems.
ReplyDeleteThe cdn.debian.net approach does not really allow all the mirrors to be used and it can't be guaranteed to provide consistent results, however.
DeleteI have already mentioned it in debian-devel and other places but will be blogging about it soon.
Also, cdn.debian.net can only deal with networks using AS numbers (according to ar@debian.), which is insufficient when dealing with complex network such as in China...
DeleteAron, I would like to know more about the situation in China, so that http.d.n works better there.
DeleteMirror at home is from Debian primary mirror: I've used a couple of other mirrors as well, If I were to be a customer of some of the ISPs / hosting companies, I'd definitely use theirs. ... so that's three or four in the UK.
ReplyDeleteI'm a DD and have all possible chroots on my laptop. I check for mirrors every time I change network. For static servers (e.g. my $home network & my personal server) I use local mirrors (my own apt-cacher-ng with a mirror backed by ISP for that network).
ReplyDeleteIdeally apt-mirror discovery should be automatic: I want my laptop to detect that there is a local mirror on my home/office/debconf/etc network and use that & fallback to cdn.debian.net if local mirror cannot provide recent enough *.deb for requested arch.
Hi.
ReplyDeleteI work at a University, which has an official mirror. Within the university, the mirror is fantastic, but even outside, within the city, the mirror offers phenomenal speed.
Call me an unusual user (and DD), but I know all the national mirrors and most of their admins. I hop around as I need to when mirrors break, but generally stick to the mirror run by my ISP (as they give me unmetered access to it).
ReplyDeleteOn the road, I often go with cdn.debian.net, though. And mirror:// for Ubuntu. I haven't tried http.debian.net yet, but I don't like the idea of 302 redirecting every request, or possibly using different mirrors for apt-get update vs installation.
I would love to not have to think about mirrors, but given data metering, I don't have that luxury. And given DSL bandwith, I find having a local mirror on my desktop very useful.
I use 'http://http.debian.net/debian' which searches for a mirror in my country. :)
ReplyDeleteI ran apt-spy three days ago.
ReplyDeleteWell, the question isn't if people use the mirror, or the load on the primary mirrors, the question is more: where do we lack of mirror? Where would it be useless to add yet-another-mirror? For sure, there are developed country that have a lack of good connectivity to some decent mirror. I'm thinking for example about Australia and Singapore, which I never find good connectivity to some decent servers.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's not much we can do about "where do we lack mirrors", as they are sponsored and we can't get to choose where they are located :)
DeleteI will follow-up to the other comment in another blog post.
It's not the mirror that is causing trouble for users (espeically new ones), it's the sources.list
ReplyDeleteThe difference between stable/testing/unstable's sources.list is lost to all new users and may even stumble some season users (if they chose to switch from one to the other.
Maybe you can post a short article on how/what is required for each of them? :D
I hardly ever change mirrors, but I use apt-cacher-ng where it makes sense. I think major change would be using apt-p2p. It's pretty obsolete and poorly supported right now, but it could make much profit if become popular. And it still provides fallback to http.
ReplyDeleteHm. Strange. ru-mirror points to lt domain, but we have mirror.yandex.ru in russia.
ReplyDeleteWhat used to be ftp.ru.d.o seemd to be down and yandex.ru is not a push mirror. That means that it has a cronjob that syncs the mirror every now and then, instead of being notified right after the new content is available.
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