Test US mirror for bordeaux.guix.gnu.org and slow downloading of substitutes

[Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net>]

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Hey!

So the nar-herder came in to existence at the end of last year (2021)
and while the main use at the time was addressing the lack of storage on
bayfront, I also hoped to improve the situation regarding mirrors for
substitutes.

I'm not in a great situation to test this though, as my usual internet
connection is slow enough that a closer mirror probably won't make much
difference.

So, one thing that I'd be interested in, is hearing from anyone who
thinks they get worse download performance from bordeaux.guix.gnu.org or
ci.guix.gnu.org than they get when downloading other
things. Importantly, it would be good to know roughly where
(geographically) the machine doing the downloading is, and some data to
show the difference.

For example, I'm in the United Kingdom in Europe, and this is the output
from wget downloading a ~200M file from bordeaux.guix.gnu.org:

  → wget https://bordeaux.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0
  --2022-05-20 16:49:56--  https://bordeaux.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0
  Resolving bordeaux.guix.gnu.org (bordeaux.guix.gnu.org)... 2a0c:e300::58, 185.233.100.56
  Connecting to bordeaux.guix.gnu.org (bordeaux.guix.gnu.org)|2a0c:e300::58|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
  Length: 208615205 (199M) [text/plain]
  Saving to: ‘078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0.6’
  
  078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64 100%[======================>] 198.95M  4.24MB/s    in 46s     
  
  2022-05-20 16:50:43 (4.31 MB/s) - ‘078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0.6’ saved [208615205/208615205]


Also, I've setup a US based (Hetzner data center, east coast) mirror of
bordeaux.guix.gnu.org:

  https://bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net/

So, I'd also be interested in seeing how that performs for people, and
how it compares against bordeaux.guix.gnu.org, which is hosted in France
in Europe.

Here's my output from wget:

  → wget https://bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net/nar/lzip/078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0
  --2022-05-20 16:50:44--  https://bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net/nar/lzip/078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0
  Resolving bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net (bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net)... 5.161.49.48
  Connecting to bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net (bordeaux-us-east-mirror.cbaines.net)|5.161.49.48|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
  Length: 208615205 (199M) [text/plain]
  Saving to: ‘078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0.7’
  
  078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64 100%[======================>] 198.95M  4.17MB/s    in 47s     
  
  2022-05-20 16:51:32 (4.22 MB/s) - ‘078vr3r8mn3yrwzwxw64hmcyshic9p3q-stellarium-0.21.0.7’ saved [208615205/208615205]


Now, performance is probably a bit more complicated than just download
speed. The US mirror holds the narinfo information locally, which should
enable it to respond to requests more quickly, reducing latency, but
this is a little harder to test.

Thanks,

Chris

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