Re: multiple mirror code && setup HEAD

["David A. Cobb" <superbiskit at home dot com>]

Trying to jump aboard long after the ship left the pier . . . .

Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:

>>Setup now allows the selection of multiple mirror sites, and will
>>download from them failing over automatically when an error occurs, on a
>>per-package basis.
> 
> Coolness.  One dime-a-dozen-notion that I've been having is an automatic site
> selection ability that would ping 'em all and let God sort 'em out, or rather
> qsort, and then fail over in order of increasing ping.


I've been mentally doodling something like this in a different context. 
  How about, instead of *ping* the sites, retrieve their 
table-of-contents (here = setup.ini), saving the time.  This would give 
a time measure that accounts for the current business of the remote 
site, congestion on the net, and all the other nasty factors that can 
affect network timings.  One caveat - also applicable to ping - is that 
some remote sites may be unable to satisfy the request at all within a 
reasonable time.  Thus one needs to timeout the request and mark the 
affected sites as loosing the race.

Of course, this is all much too costly in time to do sequentially - 
maybe with multiple connections it can be made useable.

Just a thought.
-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate.
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