MAJOR EQUIPMENT EXPENDITURE

[Steve Thomas]

Tony's mistake has reminded me of an issue I've been meaning to raise: what
(if anything) is being done in support of mirroring and caching systems in
Oz?

With the introduction of AARNet charging for international traffic, it
surely makes sense for Oz sites to support such systems, yet the number one
site, archie.au, seems to be going from bad to worse. E.g. Alex is (or
seems to be) dead. E.g. the sumex mirror is gone, due to lack of space.
E.g. the system has always and continues to run like a dog, to the extent
that it is quite often faster to ftp from a US site than from archie.au.

Clearly, there should be a policy in place which supports the existence of
this system, and ensures sufficient funding to maintain it at a useable
level. We need to mirror more, not less. And we need a decent intelligent
caching system for those things not mirrored - perhaps a national proxy
server.

Is anyone aware of efforts in this direction? If not, should we be pushing
this to whoever?


Steve

 ___________________________________________________________________________
 Stephen Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst
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 Email: sthomas@library.adelaide.edu.au
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