Throttling Pigs
Feb 8, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
Hogthrob and Strangepork, 2 of the 3 CrunchBang Linux CD image servers, have had their connections throttled from 100Mbps to just 10Mbps. Piggy remains unaffected, for the time being.
This is not good news, but not totally unexpected. The servers have been doing a fine job of dishing out images, but at the same time, they have received an absolute hammering. Since March ‘10, more than 50 terabytes has been distributed, which is not bad considering the machines only have little solo Atom chips and 512MB RAM.
Anyhow, what is done is done and I think it is probably time to rethink CrunchBang’s distribution method. I am currently toying with the idea of only offering BitTorrent downloads. I am sure the CrunchBang community would understand if the direct download links disappeared; after all, the project is only small and it does have limited funds available. Also, as yamatt pointed out:
Centralised storage was so last decade :P
I could not agree more, especially when it involves distributing large files. This was one reason I was very keen to set-up CrunchBang’s opentracker instance, which has been performing well. I think it would be good to use it more.
My only concern over using a BitTorrent only distribution method is with the initial seeding of the images. I am sure I could probably get by with just a couple of machines on different networks, or may be I could keep all 3 pigs running and just limit their torrent connection speeds, when necessary. Hmm, food for thought.
In other semi-related news, I released some new CrunchBang images today, I know, great timing, eh?!
8 responses to “Throttling Pigs”
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Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
BitTorrent trackers sound like a great idea! When I recently downloaded LMDE Linux Mint Debian Edition, they offered several options including downloading through BitTorrent, which took about 10 min…If everybody who D/L’s makes sure to keep seeding until their U/L ratio reaches 1.00 (or preferably higher) we’ll be able to get good D/L speeds for would-be Crunchbangers. Btw, I’ve been a satisfied user of #! ever since the Ubuntu days with Cruncheee on my ASUS Eee 901, then #! 9.04 Jaunty, and later CB Statler alpha -> CB Statler Squeeze. CB is now #19 on Distrowatch.org!!! Many thanks, Corenominal!
-jun
Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
@jun, I am not sure it would be possible to convince everyone to achieve a 1.00 upload ratio, but it is a good idea. Maybe some nice wording on the download page would help. :)
Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
I kind of like the idea of torrent download only. yamatt’s comment is probably tongue in cheek but I do like it in a quirky kind of way. I think quirky suits CrunchBang well ;)
Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
BitTorrent may be the solution indeed. As for the seeding, what about web seeding?
Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
@omns, I agree, I think yamatt was being cheeky, he is a very cheeky chap, but still, many a true word is dented in jest. :)
@tankmiche, I was not aware of web seeding. Thanks for the link, I will look into it.
Feb 9, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
I am def up for only torrent downloads, as most people who would download it should probably prefer torrents anyway. If you do this, I’d prob set up my seed box to help with seeding :-) and I’m sure others will do the same.
Feb 10, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
I think its reasonable to use bit torrent when its a smaller project, i also try to upload to Linuxtracker.com cause the stuff there use to be seeded a long time.
Will help out with the seeding as much as possible once my fiber net is installed.
Feb 10, 2011 (about 1 year ago)
Nice one, thank you friTTe. :)