Suggestions

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 04:09:35PM +0200, ???????? wrote:
>    4)
>    yum should select the mirror to download from in a smarter way,
>    considering the current load on the mirror and the distance of the mirror
>    from the user. This will help reduce the load on the mirrors and make the
>    download faster for the user. The mirrorlist server should know what is
>    the load on each mirror, and give yum the mirrorlist sorted by the load
>    and the distance from the user. yum should prefer the less busy and
>    closest mirror it can find.

MirrorManager (used by yum through Fedora and rpmfusion's repository
files) partially implements this.  It uses BGP routing data and
GeoIP to guess at the distance from the user, in decending order,
* specific network blocks (IPv4 and v6)
* same Autonomous System
* both client and server on Internet2 or related high-speed research network
* same country
* same continent
* any other mirror

Further, it weighs the choice in each of the above lists by the
nominal bandwidth available by a particular mirror (e.g. if mirror A
is capable of serving 100Mbps, while mirror B is capable of serving
1Gbps, mirror A will be chosen 1/10 as often as mirror B).

Fedora has 244 public mirrors listed at the moment, and hundreds more
private mirrors.  We have no way, nor really any desire, to know in
real time the load and network capacity of any connection between
each mirror and each specific user.  Perhaps Akamai does, but that's
not a service we pay for.

Thanks,
Matt
Fedora Mirror Wrangler, and MirrorManager author

-- 
Matt Domsch
Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux