Requirements Final Draft Attempt #2 :-/

[Ken Smith]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 02:19:08PM -0400, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 01:26:19 -0400, Ken Smith <kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU> said:
> 
> > 5) Will be given a "ftpX.CC.freebsd.org" hostname and will be a candidate
> >    for becoming a "ftpX.freebsd.org" hostname.
> 
> > 3) Will be given a "ftpX.CC.freebsd.org" name.
> 
> I think that this would be more helpful if sites were categorized
> along a different axis: architecture.  It doesn't make sense to
> require every primary mirror site everywhere in the world to carry
> every architecture.  Few people outside of Japan, for example, have
> need of PC98 releases.  Other places may want to cut out Alpha or
> sparc64 bits if those distributions are very infrequently downloaded.

This all depends on what (if anything) we want to tell users the
distinction is between TLD machines and the rest of them.  Based
mostly on some chats with someone on re@ I got the impression the
most useful thing would be if we could tell end-users:

	You will find what you are looking for on the TLD machines,
	and they will have it very shortly after it gets posted to
	the Distribution Servers.  You might get better performance
	from a CC-listed machine because it is "closer" to you but
	what those hosts carry and how fast they get it varies.

It seems simple and clean. :-)  I'm open to suggestions on what
would be a better way to use the TLD designation, though I figured
one of the things we were moving towards was TLD-based things are
of "International" interest versus "Regional" interest.

I don't mind doing more fine-grained cataloging and having that
reflected in the Handbook but it's a two-way street.  I'd need to
provide more info in the Handbook and probably would need to update
it more often but you guys would need to keep me informed whenever
you make changes like dropping an architecture, or getting more
disk space and deciding to carry more, etc.

That said the freebsdmirrors.org maintainer got back to us this
morning and seems interested in working with us to adjust the
site to the newer status of things (DNS layout as well as architectures
supported, etc).  Just needs to find the time.  That might be a
solution as well.

-- 
						Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |