Idea for ftp (apt yum) mirrors

[Jaap A. Haitsma]

Jos Vos wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 06:06:18PM +0100, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:
> 
> 
>>I don't know if javascript can do this but I just use for explaining the 
>>idea.
>>
>>You could also enhance apt or yum with this.
>>
>>Does this exist? Is it possible? If it possible/exists why does nobody 
>>use it.
> 
> 
> Javascript (brrr...) would only work with a (graphical) browser, while
> lost of downloads are done via command-line ftp (ncftpget) or http
> (curl, wget) clients.
> 
> Furthermore, AFAIK there is no (free) system that easily finds a
> *geographically* nearby mirror.  In Europe you could maybe check on
> your own country (== top level domain), but this does not work for
> .com etc. domains that many European companies have.
> 
> And, last but not least, as one of the maintainers of a big ftp site
> I can say that lost of people *do* know how to find a nearby mirror,
> so there is no real need for this.
> 
Of course people would still be able to get it still with wget or ftp or 
similar tools. Only if you click on the link on the webpage you would 
get this feature. Like I said the javascript was just an example. I 
would even prefer to do this completely on the server side, but I do not 
really see how that will be possible.
The nice thing of what I propose that it is adaptive and transparent.