On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 10:45:02PM +0200, David Jardine wrote: > Wanting to upgrade from Woody to Sarge and having a slow modem > (not one of those ultra-modern 56K things), I thought apt-spy > might be a useful thing to use to find the fastest mirror. I > have no complaints about the result because I have no way of > knowing how much faster or slower it would have been if I > hadn't used the mirror in Brazil that came out fastest in > their test. The answer to your question in the topic is, "not really that useful for ME". On much faster links, a small increase in latency such as 10ms can have a dramatic effect on the maximum bandwidth attainable. If you want to know more about that, google for "bandwidth delay product". But on a much slower link like your slow modem it doesn't really matter, and indeed since your downloads may take on the order of hours anyway it is dubious logic to expect the results of a single test to continue to be valid that long. You could use it at several different times to see which mirrors are consistently faster for you and stick with them. > Might I have been better off just looking for the server > nearest to me geographically? Yes, or using apt-spy or netselect to find out if there is a mirror or two that are consistently faster. But on a slow modem, don't expect miracles whatever the case. :)
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