Hello, Robert Schiele wrote:
Yes, we see that mirror admins typically don't do this but what exactly is the _reason_ that they don't run a seeder? For example why don't _you_ run one?
Two things: - performance: on a high traffic ftp server you want to serve your client as quickly as possible. This means pushing files in as large chunks as possible. It's optimized for a central location. Bittorent operates a very different way: it slices up files in small pieces, optimized for distributed downloads. This means a lot more disk I/O and a lot more network connections, as by ftp or http download. While it's not a problem for a few hundred megabytes, and a weak network connection, it's a complete disaster for larger amount of data with a good network connection. - security: apache & *ftpd were here for ages, and are well known and quickly fixed, if broken. P2P clients and servers are quickly moving targets with a lot more bugs. I'm the most worried about this service on my machines... I have it running, but my server can handle it: it serves just Hungary, and not the rest of the world. For most time of the year, ftp/http servers can handle the load, and there is no good reason for using torrents. But around releases, we should operate a seeder network to take off some load from these central hubs. The problem is, that most torrent users turn off their clients as soon, as their files are downloaded. We should have a number of volunteers, preferably at universities, where bandwidth is not a problem, who don't turn off their torrent clients, once the files are there, or even seed files downloaded other ways. For beta's they should run for 2-3 days, for a new release for 2-3 weeks. To have an impact, there should be at least 20+ well networked seeders. In between just make sure, that 3-4 seeders are running constantly all the time. A machine with 1M/s upload serves a lot more, than 30 with 30k... Bye, -- CzP http://peter.czanik.hu/