Service/mirrors

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Introduction

A content delivery network or Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of computers containing copies of data, placed at various points in a network so as to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from clients throughout the network. A client accesses a copy of the data near to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing the same central server, thereby causing a bottleneck near that server.

Goals

Reduce bandwidth at primary download server.
Improve quality of service for users.
Move content closer to users, thus reducing latency.

Architecture

The Sugar Labs Content Delivery Network uses MirrorBrain as a redirector. The redirector, which lives in a Sugar Labs data center, keeps track of which files are available on which mirror. When a user requests a file, the redirector points the user to the correct mirror and automatically starts the file download.

Mirrors

The current list of available mirrors is available at http://mirrors.sugarlabs.org/

Setting up a new mirror

For mirror administrators

All you need is a web server with enough bandwidth to serve the files. To set up a new mirror, the site administrator needs to:

Set up rsync job to synchronize a copy of the files on http://downloads.sugarlabs.org onto their local system. You can schedule it daily or more frequently, but please don't sync more often than once per hour.
Publish the files via HTTP and -- if possible -- rsync. Rsync allows for efficient mirror monitoring (scanning). FTP is less efficient, but still preferred over an HTTP-only mirror.
Alert the Sugar Labs System Administrators that they would like their mirror into rotation, including the following information in the request:
- Name and URL of the mirror operator (e.g. organization)
- Name and email address of the administrative contact
- ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code of the server location
- HTTP base URL of the files on the mirror (typically http://mirrors.example.org/sugarlabs/)
- rsync base URL of the files on the mirror (typically rsync://mirrors.example.org/sugarlabs/)

Please contact sysadmin AT sugarlabs DOT org if you are interested in hosting a mirror.

For Sugar Labs sysadmins

To add a new mirror to the MirrorBrain redirector:

Choose a name for the mirror, usually the host name.
Register the mirror with MirrorBrain:

sudo -u mirrorbrain mb new <mirror name> --operator-name <operator name> \
 --operator-url <operator URL> -a <admin name> -e <admin email> \
 -c <country code> -H <base HTTP URL> -R <base rsync URL> -F <base FTP URL>

Scan and enable the mirror:

sudo -u mirrorbrain mb scan -e <mirror name>