Comments on the fastestmirror plugin

[Bill Davidsen]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> The yum fastestmirror plugin (yum-plugin-fastestmirror) claims to
> evaluate the speed of a bunch of repo mirrors and use the fastest one
> relative to the user's location.
> 
> However AFAIK what it *actually* does is make a test connection to the
> to the candidate mirrors and order them according to response time,
> which in many cases is dominated by network latency, which can distort
> the results. For well-connected user machines in first-world countries
> it probably doesn't matter much, and may have the beneficial effect of
> spreading the load over a wider range of mirrors, but for those of us in
> a less privileged position it can matter a lot. Ironically, these are
> the cases where such an optimization could do the most good.
> 
And there you have the heart of the problem, the evaluation is not remotely 
correct for most cases. It would be worth adding code to download some small RPM 
from a number of sites and measure b/w for something real. However, disabling 
the feature works, too.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot