🚀 go-pugleaf

I am pleased to announce, the first Public BETA release of DFTP

                 The Distributed FTP System

What is it (short)?

An automated FTP local search for the same file to notify the
user of the availablity of a file locally or nearer (And optionally
fetch it from that site)

What is it (long)?

January 1st 1995, AARNET will be introducing Volume Charging
for everyone. (At least International traffic)

Everyone knows, that mirror's of FTP sites only have limited
use, as there are allways clueless users, or people who forget
about them, and go directly to the source. (Eg sunsite)

Alex doesn't work properly, because of the NFS nature.. and the bandwith
needed for it
Other mirror access schemes don't work because they only
work on full mirrors.

DFTP is foremost SIMPLE. Simple ideas are usually allways the best.

Basically, when a user uses ncftp to fetch a file from a remote site
it gets the A: filename, B: size.
Using this information alone, the ncftp client will fire off small
udp/dftp request packets to each DFTPD server the administrator has
in it's list of servers (Typically in order of bandwidth size)
If a file with exactly the same name and size is found, it will return
to the client where it is located. The ncftp client will then prompt
the user with :-
"The file 'blah.tar.gz' has been found on 'archie.au' (Faster Link) retrieve
from there instead?"

The chances of having two files with EXACTLY the same filename and size
is very remote, and besides the user allways has the option of overiding
the DFTP suggestion. But, typically most users will answer yes as the
closer link is usually allways faster.

Where can I get it?

spectrum.www.com.au:/other/unix/dftp (Fairly fast link)
lsupoz.apana.org.au:/pub/dftp (Official site but VERY slow link)

Is there a mailing list?

Yes.. dftp@lsupoz.apana.org.au

Admin to dftp-owner@lsupoz.apana.org.au

Anthony Rumble smilie@mpx.com.au