Feature changed by: Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer) Feature #310532, revision 6 Title: Using the torrent protocol in package manager. openSUSE-11.4: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Wallacy Freitas (wallacyf) Description: I believe talk about the benefits of the torrent protocol is not necessary. Integrating the torrent in yast (or directly in libzypp), will also reduce the bandwidth consumption of servers, improving the speed of many users.It would be possible to use all of the servers contained in metalink and add them as seed. I made a small little test with this package using utorrent: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/STABLE/openSUSE_11... The improved speed of 45kbps to 350kbps, adding the mirros of metalink as seed. You might not need P2P, only the servers contained in metalink may be enough. There is a similar project that does something like: http://burnbit.com/ But an integrated repository for openSUSE would be ideal. + Discussion: + #1: Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer) (2010-09-23 23:37:26) + If done, a torrent only makes sense for packages of a minimum size. I + don't know what it is. Maybe 10MB or more could come via torrent. + Obviously the MD5 signature would still need to come from a autorized + server. With that limitation, I'd be in favor. + But, I suspect even more useful than setting up a torrent feature for + large packages would be to setup a hierarchy of package servers that + applied to all packages. Thus I could establish one of the servers at + my office to be my package server. Conceptually it would be much like + DNS. + My normal opensuse clients and servers would be pointed at the main + office package server. If it didn't have the package, then it would + forward the request out to a opensuse mirror, but then keep a copy on + the local package server. + In theory, a cache time could also be set. Maybe at 90 days or + so. (I'd want it adjustable, just as it is in DNS.) Then if a package + had not been requested from the package server in some time, it could + be deleted locally. + If a true hierarchy were established, universities could be asked host + public package servers, etc. + It is similar to the mirror concept we have now, but leverages a lot of + the DNS cache design. + + + -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310532