🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <x7d8xsnpr9.fsf@Rincewind.arch.su.edu.au>,
Thorsten Schnier  <thorsten@rincewind.arch.su.edu.au> wrote:
[snip]
>I never tried setting up a mirror, but I wonder if it isn't possible to 
>split the mirroring of a large archive like sunsite into several blocks, 
>each done at a different site. E.g  one is doing 'incoming', the other
>'apps' and maybe 'xapps', another one 'distrib', etc. The main directory
>hirarchie isn't really changing that much. With http, this could be
>totally transparent to the user: every site has a main 'index.html'
>that contains links to the appropriate site for the subirectories. 
>(won't work for ftp, though).
>
>Keeping just one part up-to-date (and backed up) should be much easier
>than keeping the whole thing up-to-date, and the network load should
>be much better distributed. If enough places participate, some redundacy
>(and load sharing) would be possible, too (the main index is updated when
>a site falls out of the system, or randomly selects a site if more than 
>one mirrors the same part).  If someone wnts to contribute, he/she
>could do so with comparatively small resources. 20 sites with 2 GB harddisks 
>should be much more efficient than two with 20 GB.
>
>I know parts of the archives are mirrored at different places anyway
>(like here on campus), if those resources could be organized into 
>some 'australian network of partial sunsite mirrors' this might work. 
>

We do this on our local ethernet using Network File System from
Slackware and Debian.  Response times might be poor for sites locate a
long distance apart but should work well for those with direct links
like USYD, UTS and UNSW.


-- 
Regards,
Ian Maclaine-cross (ian@ilm.mech.unsw.edu.au)