[CentOS-mirror] Terrible .edu mirror performance

Mon Sep 27 21:44:19 UTC 2010
Jonathan Thurman <JThurman at nwresd.k12.or.us>

> -----Original Message-----

> Yours is .EDU mirror number 3 with performance issues: 11-20kB/sec on
> verizon fios as I type this.

Interesting, I have an average download speed of 3.84 MB/s from http://centos.eecs.wsu.edu for a random iso (CentOS-5.5-i386-LiveCD-Release2.iso).  Are you using RSYNC/HTTP/FTP?  Maybe it is something between you and these mirrors that is causing the issue. 

> After discussion with another .EDU maintainer, the dismal speeds were
> do to hard core bandwidth capping on their web server (mod_bandwidth).

Having a bandwidth cap per client is reasonable, preventing your customers from accessing content because two public clients on GigE are taking all of the bandwidth is not.  To me the question isn't how fast a single client can download, but how many clients can be supported at X bandwidth per connection.

> My suggestion is that anyone running a bandwidth limiter of any sort,
> or with limited connectivity (<1Gbps upstream these days is limited) should be
> placed on Tier2 status.

While we don't use a .EDU domain for our mirroring (many do not, like osuosl.org) we are still an education entity, and many these days have larger pipes.  Feel free to test against http://mirror.nwresd.org/pub/centos/ but you will find some limits depending on what protocol and how many clients are connected.

-Jonathan