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Date:      14 Oct 1999 16:51:45 +0200
From:      naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber)
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Ports system *rocks*
Message-ID:  <7u4qm1$2jqp$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de>
References:  <871zazvtou.fsf@main.wgaf.net> <rd6d7uihq00.fsf@world.std.com> <87g0zevk9o.fsf@main.wgaf.net> <871zayvcps.fsf_-_@main.wgaf.net>

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Arcady Genkin <a.genkin@utoronto.ca> wrote:

> I'm *very* impressed with the way ports stuff is organized. [..]
> Takes strain off FreeBSD's ftp servers, too, because the
> packages get downloaded from their own home sites...

Actually, if this were necessarily so, this would be a major strike
against the ports collection.

Imagine for a moment that your host is on a local ethernet that is
in turn connected to a large national network, which has FTP mirror
sites hanging off a 34..155Mbit/s backbone, but whose international
gateway is hopelessly congested. Would you then prefer to pull
tarballs at 100 bytes/s from overseas if the same data is sitting
on one of those nearby FTP mirrors, with the limit to the download
speed only being your local 10 Mbit/s ethernet line?

Now, I don't need to imagine this. I experience it every day.

Fortunately, the ports mechanism is more flexible. In /etc/make.conf
you can specify mirror sites for many well-known master archives,
such as GNU, Perl CPAN, etc. And you can specify an override, so
a first attempt will be made to fetch the distfiles from, say, your
nearby FreeBSD mirror.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                  naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de



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