Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:56:05 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Andrew Lentvorski" <bsder@allcaps.org>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Could we get the FreeBSD torrent servers back? Message-ID: <002001c758a1$a3ed10f0$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645> References: <45E0F697.2030005@allcaps.org>
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Lentvorski" <bsder@allcaps.org> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 6:38 PM Subject: Could we get the FreeBSD torrent servers back? > Can we please get the FreeBSD torrent tracker and/or server back? > > I was sitting here staring at an FTP from ftp5.us.freebsd.org that was > bouncing around between 200-250KB/s. Even switching over to > ftp1.us.freebsd.org is only getting me around 450KB/s-and that is > bouncing up and down (my upload is only showing 12.7KB/s, so it's not > choking for lack of return ACK's). > > That's about 1/3 - 2/3 compared with even a lightly seeded Bittorrent > cluster pulling a Linux ISO torrent. A Linux torrent will saturate my > download somewhere north of 600KB/s and park it there until the ISO > completes. > > For reference, the old FreeBSD torrent file, even *without* the FreeBSD > tracker, operating solely from 10 old seeders, and the Azureus > distrubuted hash table, is delivering almost the same download as > ftp5.us.freebsd.org. And that's effectively an abandoned torrent. > > I have read some of the previous comments about using torrents, but the > fact that the mirrors are clearly *not* as fast as a torrent cluster > warrants some discussion. > Nobody pays the mirrors for their bandwidth. They are hosting and paying for the bandwidth out of the goodness of their hearts. Nothing is stopping you from setting up your own torrent server on a big fast pipe that everyone else can use, and not pay you for. I don't know for sure how other ISP's do it but we definitely use bandwidth limitations on the servers we host, customers that pay a lot get a lot, customers that pay less get less, and the freebie servers get whatever is left over after the paying customers have had their fill. Trust me, the admins that run the mirrors -do know- how to give you your 600Kbps on an FTP transfer. The reason your not getting it, is because they are choosing not to give that out, for one or more of a host of reasons, some of which are undoubtedly related to how the pipe is being paid for. I would suspect if you examined the financing scheme used for the Linux download servers you would find that it is quite different than FreeBSD. There are quite a lot of Linux users out there who think nothing of paying $100 for a Linux distribution in a cardboard box that they could download for free from the same distributor. They are subsidizing all the other Linux users who are downloading Linux for free, and everyone in the Linux world seems to be perfectly happy with this. I used to get around 600Kbps from the old Walnut Creek CDROM server when I pulled down FreeBSD, via FTP, years ago. Routinely. And that server had an upper limit of something around 2-3000 users. But of course, Walnut Creek went out of business. FreeBSD isn't Linux, and this is one of the ways that it shows. I personally am very happy to trade a few hundred kbps on downloading an ISO that I do a couple of times a year, in exchange for having Red Ha.. I mean the FreeBSD Foundation suddenly announce that "FreeBSD Enterprise" is now a chargable item and you will have to download Fedor... I mean FreeBSD Lite, if you want your free operating system. Ted
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