As I never cared for servers with traffic amounts so huge as we are talking about here, maybe my suggestion is not viable, so simply tell me if I say something stupid. :-) For me the main problem seems to be, that the mirrors don't manage to rsync in a fast way (that there is not enough funding for Eberhard's server is a problem which can't be solved technically ;-) ). Isn't it possible to allow the mirrors to rsync with full bandwith by traffic shaping or does traffic shaping simply not scale up to this level? If the hardware doesn't allow this, maybe Eberhard should first store the files in a place which can only be accessed by the mirrors until they finished their rsyncs? BTW, to understand the situation better: The mirrors rsync to ftp.gwdg.de and not to some *.novell.com or *.suse.com? Are the mirror servers starting their rsync just a few minutes after the files are available or do they wait for some cron job? Not to forget to thank all the people who invest their time (and servers) for this project. :-) Ciao Siegbert