[tex-live] hosting inst image

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Fri Mar 2 23:34:15 CET 2007


Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh at Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org> wrote:

> But why ?  In your original message, which sparked all
> this activity, you wrote :
> 
> 	Due to bandwidth concerns, we can no longer afford to have the inst
> 	image on ftp://tug.org for public consumption.  Despite semi-hiding it
> 	from view and my disrecommending it for use, it's found by too many people.#
> 
> If it's only the .inst image which you have pulled,
> is there real benefit to be had from making the .live
> image available via BT ?

the .inst. image was pulled because it was the straw that broke the
camel's back.  it's not to say that the (much larger) .live. image isn't
also a real bother, just that we're just about coping.

admittedly, the traffic is declining a bit, now that the "must have it
today" brigade have (presumably) got their dose; but i for one am
definitely struggling still (it was the new mactex yesterday -- who's to
say what will be gobbling my bandwidth tomorrow?).

> I can see (as I've said earlier in this thread) that
> I can foresee the time when CTAN itself will become a
> vast network of BT nodes, but is there real benefit in
> treating the whole of TeX Live as a special case, or
> is it better to stick to what we have at the moment,
> which is .inst via BT or .CZ, and .live via FTP from
> Tug.Org ?

i'm regarding it as a port in a storm, just now.  i tend to be wary of
all these p2p things, and remain to be convinced of bittorrent.  (of
course, i haven't actually read the papers about the protocol yet...)

i doubt that distribution of any software on which people rely can do
entirely without some sort of central control; however, it's not really
my issue.  it's not going to be all that long before i'm out of this
game for ever...

robin



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