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

[Blake Shaw <blake@sweatshoppe.org>]

Hi Christopher,

Here in Singapore download speed has gone from bad to worse over the
last two weeks, so bad that I was having to --fallback often and wound
up setting up a cuirass instance to continuously build a collection of
manifests I'm working with (which solved the issue). Not at my machine
atm but will wget stellarium and send the results when I am.

Best,
Blake

---
Blake Shaw
Director, SWEATSHOPPE
sweatshoppe.org
---

On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 11:09 PM Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> wrote:
>
> 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