MAJOR EQUIPMENT EXPENDITURE

[John Winship]

Steve Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst,  Barr Smith Library, The University
of Adelaide, writes:

>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?
>


CAUDIT (the Committtee of Australian Universities Directors of IT) has
already raised the issue together with that of the management of AARNet at
the AVCC's Standing Coimmittee on Information Resources (SCIR) and is
proposing to conduct a feasibility study into the whole isse of mirroring,
caching etc.

John Winship
Secretary CAUDIT

*************************************************************
Associate Professor John Winship
Director Computing Centre
Curtin University of Technology
GPO U1987
Perth WA 6001
Tel: 619 351 7431
FAX: 619 351 2673
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