On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 08:44:56AM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: > Dear Project, > > The System Administration Team (DSA) are considering moving some of the > static hosting that Debian currently provides from our infrastructure to > one or more CDNs. We have received feedback indicating that a broader > discussion is desired. > > Debian has, for over a decade, operated its own form of a content > delivery network (multiple variants, actually) by leveraging our own > infrastructure as master sources and community-provided infrastructure > (primarily from universities and regional network providers) for local > distribution. > It works - tell anyone to use ftp.[country name].debian.org and it "just works". If ftp.[mycountry].debian.org is down, use ftp.[neighbour country] .debian.org - and, crucially, it's all under one debian.org domain. If managers/software licensing mavens/project funding authorities etc. question where your software is actualy from - it's from Debian themselves. That's a really, really good thing. > > We appreciate feedback while we continue our investigation of CDNs. > > Thanks for your interest, > -- > Tollef Fog Heen for the Debian System Administration team > This is (potentially) good news for laptop/desktop users: instant access from closest mirrors. This is also an increasing trend: Firefox, Raspbian, Archlinux (I think) are all CDN served. If you run behind restrictive firewall policies / in corporate land, it's not nearly so hot. Static long lasting mirrors are really useful here when you have to ask your network admin. to unblock firewalls for each IP address. If you want to configure > 10 servers, say, or to build repeated groups of servers over a long time, it's good to have consistency and the existing network provides this. If the trend globally is to CDNs, however, it will be hard to buck the trend for the long term. Just my 0.02€ Andy
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