[CentOS-mirror] mirrors in Romania hosted by the RLUG community

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 09/02/2008 05:43 PM, Lance Davis wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Sep 2008, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>
>>   As a different problem, it would be nice if it you could remove the 
>> mirrors from .pl and .cz from the list of repos returned by 
>> mirrorlist when country=ro. They are randomly picked if 
>> yum-fastestmirror is not installed and the access times are awful 
>> because there is no direct peering between Romania and those 
>> countries, connections are routed via Austria or Germany.
>
> The current mapping is :-
>
> ro => 'bg-pl-cz-hu-md'
>
> do you think it should be  at-de-bg-hu-md ???
    Well... take what I say below with a little grain of salt (IOW: I
might be wrong, but I do not think so):

    I've done traceroutes to all .cz sites reported by
http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?arch=i386&repo=os&release=4&country=cz
using source IP addresses from 5 of our national providers; all without
exception were routed via Vienna , Frankfurt or Greece->Italy (one of
the largest providers routes ALL the traffic via a tunnel to Greece and
connects to the world from there. This is the "advantage" of having the
national phone company sold to OTE Greece)
- http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?arch=i386&repo=os&country=pl return 4
mirrors from .ro (!), two from Poland and three from .cz. The Poland
mirrors are accessed either via Vienna or via Holland (telia.net)
- http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?arch=i386&repo=os&release=5&country=md
return no mirrors in .md (despite the fact that I know that there exista
at least one, I've spoken with their admin) but .ro, .pl and .cz
- http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?arch=i386&repo=os&country=bg replies
with mirrors from .ro, .pl and .cz so I guess it's safe to ignore .bg
when asking for Romanian mirrors

    I've tested using source addresses from 4 of the major providers (in
terms of number of users) + one smaller one. I am certain they cover at
least 80-85% of the Romanian users (home + business together ). There is
one other medium sized provider which I know for sure that also uses
Austria / Germany / Holland as exit points. So, to cut it short, I am
fairly sure that you can drop .pl and .cz (and even .hu) from the list
of mirrors given by mirrorlist to Romanian users. As of Bulgaria... I
see no mirror over there but OTOH despite being geographically very
close, I have never heard of any direct peering between our countries. I
cannot say what is best for Bulgarian users, but once again, I am fairy
certain that Romanian mirrors are not the best choice for them. And
probably neither are Polish ones.
    I know it's strange, but peering over here is not done under the
same rules as it's done 4000 Km more to the west. You might be very well
physically be only 5 meters aways from your next-door neighbor but 15
hops and 5000 KM away in terms of network connections. And I say that
with the knowledge given by one year of work as network admin at one of
the largest national providers.

Regards

    Manuel