Re: I am proposing a feature in apt-get

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Johannes Schauer <josch@debian.org> wrote:

Hi,

Quoting Rani Ahmed (2015-02-13 06:59:11)
> Hi. I hope I sending the correct mailing list.

for apt feature requests/proposals? Yes.

> Well.. I noticed that the web caching proxy of my ISP allows me to download
> any small file , probably having a size of less than 100kB at the wire speed
> (full speed), and any big one on a slower shaped speed.

How does your ISP track "file sizes"? Does it really count how many bytes are
transferred over every individual TCP connection and will start throttling each
TCP connection after 100 kB?

> And I think many ISP's follow the same method.

I never heard of one. I'm from Europe. Can you name examples?

I live in Beirut, Lebanon.

So the connection speed is usually small. The speed that an individual in Europe can subscribe or buy in Lebanon is distributed to hundreds of people. The use squid web caching proxy and tcng (the traffic shaping and control tool) .

In the configuration of squid and tcng , there is something called the burst. I hope you know it. and what I know about it is that it allows you to download or read some kilobytes at full speed. Then if a connection downloads more than the burst size, it will slow it down. And That's what the ISPs usually do. I used to work in a small ISP before the DSL system is applied all over Lebanon by the government. but there are still people who uses the small ISP method because they don't want to pay allot.

> So, this is what I think that apt-get should do as long as it displays the
> total sum of mega bytes to download before the download starts.

What has "displaying the total sum of mega bytes" to do with the problem?
Because it gives you the sum/total download size of all packages to be downloaded, this means that apt-get knows the size of each package to be downloaded. therefore you can sort the files according to their sizes and download the small ones first.

> apt-get has to sort the package file sizes and download the smaller
>package files first.

What does the order in which downloads are done to do with your ISP throttling
them? You say your ISP throttles "downloads" of bigger than 100kB. But what you
say now also means that it puts each "download" within the context of the
"downloads" that happened before and after it. So what *exactly* is your ISP
throttling policy?

NOO! it speeds up the downloads that are smaller than 100KB ? got me? the 100KB is just an estimate. I am not sure how much.

all I am saying is to download small files before downloading big files.

Just try it and you'll know what I mean.

> Any small package file of course won't be greater than 100kB.

Currently, out of 44539 packages, there seem to be 24849 that are smaller than
100kB.

> I know I can write a shell script for it. But having such a feature
> built-in would be very nice. It can speed up the download.

Did you consider using a local apt proxy or cacher?

I am the only one who use linux at home. I use it as a desktop user. I am not running a service.

cheers, josch