Re: CC.freebsd.org mirrors still relevant?

On 2024-05-28 12:35:54 (+0800), John Hay wrote:
> On Tue, 28 May 2024 at 06:04, Philip Paeps <philip@freebsd.org> wrote:
>> We (clusteradm) have been actively trying to phase out the cc.f.o
>> mirrors in favour of our own CDN with clusteradm-managed mirrors.  
>> While
>> the asynchronous cc.f.o mirrors served us well in the 1990s and early
>> 2000s, our synchronised CDN is a better fit for the world we 
>> currently
>> live in.
>>
>> Currently we have 14 sites around the world.  We could use more.  We
>> only have one mirror in Africa at JINX.
>>
>> If anyone wants to provide a {download,pkg,www}.FreeBSD.org site, 
>> please
>> get in touch.  We're particularly keen to hear from sites who can
>> provide hardware as well as connectivity.
>
> So for interest sake at least, what do you need in terms of hardware? 
> Does
> it have to be physical? What would be needed in terms of access? Do 
> you
> then maintain the software side? Or is there a writeup about it 
> somewhere?

The setup at JINX is a single-machine installation, Intel E3-1220 v6, 
32G memory, 8x4T drives.  For new installations, we'd probably prefer 
more memory -- we have at least 128G in the newer mirrors.  We need at 
least 12T usable space.  We like mirrored pairs for both reliability and 
disk I/O parallelism.

We need naked internet - legacy and IPv6.  For single-machine 
installations, we usually get a /28 on the 20th century internet and a 
/64 on the 21st century internet.  In most sites, we rarely fill a 1G 
circuit.

There's a somewhat detailed writeup here:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Teams/clusteradm/generic-mirror-layout

We manage the entire system.  We only need local support if hardware 
breaks.

The ZA mirror is fairly lightly loaded, and is well connected to most of 
southern Africa.  I see 50-60ms latency from machines in TZ and KE and 
downloads at 40ish Mbit/s.  I don't think another mirror in ZA would add 
much value.

I don't have as convenient ways to test in northern/western Africa, but 
I would be surprised if the situation weren't much worse...  I'd love a 
mirror in e.g. Lagos, Accra, or Dakar for faster downloads there.

Philip