Re: Linux mirrors in India ?

["Ruchir Tewari" <ruchir_tewari@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

tried accessing ftp://sunsite.ernet.in and get
'unknown host'. what's located there ?

i don't think it's unrealistic. big ISPs also
play the role of content provider along with
access provider.
that's one reason AOL and MSN became 2 of the
the biggest ISPs in the US.

all ISPs, whether or not they are content providers
do caching of content to save bandwidth. if they have
an existing cache server, they can always use some of
the space available to act as a local mirror for some content.
if not, they can wisen up and get cache and mirroring servers.
it's a question of opimal utilization of resources - both
storage and bandwidth.

VSNL, which is currently the biggest indian ISP has
access to the 75000 Km of fiber optic cable laid
out in India by DoT - which is being grossly
underutilized, because of not enough content in
india to force the last-mile connectivity problem
to be solved quickly. besides it is a government
agency, so it has at least some obligation to
spread and popularize worthwhile content in the nation.

apart from ISPs, we should explore Universities,
IITs, RECs, software technology parks and other
institutions to do mirroring of linux related
and other free software sites. i'm sure all of these
have a few Gb of hard disk and a few Mb of bandwidth
to spare.

btw, not all the downloads consist of 600Mb linux
distributions. many of the linux rpms and other downloads
are less than a couple of MB in size. so a site
like sourceforge should be easy to mirror in terms
of bandwidth.

if there are a 100 or so mirrors in india by
end of this year, it'll be good for the end users.

- ruchir





From: Biju Chacko <biju@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Biju Chacko <biju@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: linux-india-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [LIG] Linux mirrors in India ?


On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 01:37:21PM +0000, Prakash Advani wrote:
>We are interested in setting up a mirror but want someone to sponsor the
>bandwidth. We spoke to a few ISP's including VSNL but they don't seem to
>understand how much of International bandwidth they would save. Instead
>they want to charge us a few millions on bandwidth cost alone.
>
>Ideally such a server should host all the linux, open source, free
>operating system downloads with binaries, source and CVS updated every
>6-12 hours.. this will ensure that things are updated.
>
>Can anyone convince some ISP??

Hi,

It's a little unrealistic to expect ISPs to sponsor this kind of thing. They
don't stand to gain anything by doing this. I think it is more the duty of
companies that have an interest in the spread of linux that should sponsor a
mirror.

In the meanwhile checkout ftp://sunsite.ernet.in


Biju

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Biju Chacko        | biju@xxxxxxxxxxx (work)
Exocore Consulting | biju_chacko@xxxxxxxxx (play)
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