Konstantin Svist wrote:
gilpel(a)altern.org wrote:
> Why isn't this the default?
>
Probably because it doesn't work too well.
The way it works is by pinging the IPs of all mirrors to see which one
has the smallest latency. In a perfect world, that would be the source
you want to use, but in reality all it tells you is which mirror's
firewall/etc. responds to ping fastest.
What happens is the server is either lagging or becomes overloaded fast
(possibly because many users are trying to update from it) so the speed
goes down the drain.
End result: I have 3mb download on my DSL line, but using the "fastest
mirror" often gives me 50K (or even lower) download speed. Sometimes I
end up editing the timedhosts.txt file and faking a long timeout value
for the slow host.
I suppose pirut will use fastestmirror too if it is enabled? If so, it
would expalin my sloooow install of MPlayer. I'll see how things turn out.
I might have to edit the files. I often try to update when it's getting
really late here and the mirror I'm downloading from is in the wee small
hours.
I then get excellent speeds.
Thanks for sharing your experience!