Request for Comments: updating RPMs using binary deltas

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> said:
> Absolutely.  I would think mirror operators would love to reduce the load on 
> their servers, which this would as I've envisioned it.  And their bandwidth 
> bill might even go down.

I'll chime in with seth here: most mirrors probably don't result in
bandwidth bills.

Is bandwidth paid for?  Yes.  However, if my mirror resulted in higher
bandwidth bills, it'd be shut off immediately.  We pay for several pipes
(unmetered connections), and it just so happens that we use more inbound
traffic on those pipes than outbound.  My mirror just uses available
outbound bandwidth (I'm working on a way for it to dynamically use
nearly _all_ available outbound bandwidth, without impacting normal
outbound traffic, but I'm not quite done yet).  When we have a link go
down, the first thing I do is throttle back the mirror bandwidth.

The only thing this mirror has ever cost the company is for a little bit
of power and cooling, some rack space (which we have extra), and some of
my time (but not much of that during work hours either).  I'd like to
upgrade it some, but I can't really; it is screwball hardware that I
can't find RAM for anymore (anyone got 128MB SIMMs for an Intergraph
625R?).
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.