On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, Gabor Gombas wrote:
On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 08:56:35AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:Given the number of very fast mirrors debian has for http and ftp, jigdo is actually a rather efficient method.Well, in the past I had quite the opposite experiences. Jigdo downloads a lot of small files, and one extra HTTP query per file presents a _huge_ overhead. Downloading an image with jigdo is at least 2-4 times slower than downloading the single ISO image from the very same mirror. The interesting effect is that the faster your network connection the bigger the difference in speed will be.
Indeed, as long as the cd mirrors have enough bandiwdth, plain http downloads should be by far the fastest method. Bittorrent is really good for handling the peak demand at release though. Between the releases, keeping the torrent running is mostly a testing exercise, and they should be a much worse alternative for users wanting to download isos than plain http downloads, both when it comes to performance and server load.
Jigdo helps only if you already have an older version of the image and there are not much updates.
Or if you already have a local mirror. /Mattias Wadenstein