Mirror.ac.uk to Scale Back Operations

KingDaveRa writes "It would seem that the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (www.jisc.ac.uk) have decided to withdraw funding from the www.mirror.ac.uk service. They still want to run a service, but '...perhaps on a smaller scale, and limited to the most popular mirrors. This would, however, depend upon securing sponsorship or alternative funding very quickly, and the approval of our host institutions.' This could turn out to be quite an inconvenience for the UK, as the mirror.ac.uk service has proven itself very fast and reliable."

Comments

Well, bugger.

[Doomrat]

See, that's just irritating. That's going to have quite a knock-on effect to all of the software hosted there, particularly a lot of the free stuff (something a lot of people here would likely be devastated about).

Re:Well, bugger.

[pacman on prozac]

Nah I don't see it.

For one thing its just a mirror, all that software is available on hundreds of other sites.

For another the only people who will noticed the difference between mirror.ac.uk and any european FTP site are those on janet (joint academic network). I'll be quite annoyed at getting 800kb/sec instead of 2MB/sec at uni but I'm sure I'll cope :)

Strange though, I'd have thought at the end of the day this is just going to cost JANET more as they're now going to have to pay someone external for the bandwidth for all those linux isos the students leech.

Re:Well, bugger.

[nkh]

aaaaahhhhh, JANET...

Re:Well, bugger.

[Tet]

For one thing its just a mirror, all that software is available on hundreds of other sites.

It's not just a mirror. It's a particularly fast and comprehensive mirror. It's always up, and has everything you need. OK, so I don't get the full benefit, but it's still much better than the alternatives, and I still get 3.5MB/s downloads, even without being on JANET. This is not a good day for those in the UK.

Re:Well, bugger.

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange though, I'd have thought at the end of the day this is just going to cost JANET more as they're now going to have to pay someone external for the bandwidth for all those linux isos the students leech.

Er, someone else bid lower to run the mirroring service and that's going to cost JANET more money. How do you figure that out?

That, unfortunately, is life in public tenders. You might personally be comfortable sticking with an existing supplier, with a good track record, but that doesn't cut it when you're spending taxpayer's money.

Re:Well, bugger.

[twem2]

Last year JANET started charging institutions for all traffic, not just traffic which goes outside the JANET network.
I presume that this means that JANET won't lose much money through external charges as institutions are being charged for access to mirror.ac.uk now anyway, and if costs go up they can just increase the charge to institutions...

Re:Well, bugger.

[jennifer_l]

For many of us on JANET it's a lot more than a mirror. Due to bandwidth charging by my institution if I have to use sources outside JANET then I end up having to pay for a lot of free software. Currently all my Linux installations are network installs from mirror.ac.uk and I have no qualms about updating software using source from mirror.ac.uk whenever I need to. Now I'll have to think *every* time I want to update something. That's not really very nice - and no other mirror has that property to me.

Re:Well, bugger.

[pajs]

It may be cheaper on the face of it. But what details do you know of the new service? The old one had 3 sites, lancaster, kent and reading. The new service could be based at a single place, and that would mean more real downtime due to the reduced redundancy.

Also, a cheaper service may (and certainlly initially probably can't) mirror such a comprehensive list of software. That means people will stop using the new service, and download elsewhere.

If people on the JANET stop using the mirror service provided on its network, and use external mirrors, that meants more bandwidth needs to be found. Thus, costs more. (And they used to charge uni's until recently a price per mb for everything across the transatlantic link)

Re:Well, bugger.

[SamBC]

Here, here.

Until very recently, I worked at mirror.ac.uk part-time (I'm even still on staff page, if you know where to find it).

I don't think many people realise how much effort has gone into developing and improving the mirror service. The service has always been a love of much of the staff, and we're all sad to see it go (and not just because it's costing us jobs). Like any lover, it's been a painful journey - intractible hardware, elusive bugs, the JANET core network doing strange things - but it's all be fun.

Most of my work was stuff you didn't see - helping work on backend stability, hardware maintenance, the indexer for the search engine (yes, blame me, but the engine itself was someone else's), and reporting data to the funders.

Another often-overlooked point is the fact that we are so much more than a mirror service - a customised and effective search engine, a browsing interface that lets you look inside many archive and package formats (including RPMs and DEBs), and e even offer users support and assistance.

So I for one will be sad to see it go, and will hold a wake on the day of shutdown (I'll be inviting my former workmates).

Sam

Re:Well, bugger.

[SamBC]

And here's more from the horse's mouth...

I'm frankly amazed they bid cheaper, but we don't know all the details. We already have the kit (that belongs to Lancaster and Kent unis), and the software (that too), and the mirroring agreements and existing data (they don't get copies of that, either).

However, AIUI (I wasn't involved in the tendering), we wanted to continue adding value to the mirror service, make it more reliable, more easy to use, offering more advanced access systems, and lots of cool features. I believe the winning tender was single-site, bare-bones service, from a JISC 'Strategic Partner'.

Oh, and tenders don't have to go to the lowest bidder. When UKMS formed, it had a slightly more expensive bid than the competition, but the promise of added-value and dual-site operation won us the day. I wasn't there then, either, but I've been told by the folks that were.

SamBC

Re:Well, bugger.

[markxz]

As far as I know institutions were charged for data that went over the transatlantic links (and not for data that went round Europe

JA.NET used to fund a proxy service that the institutions could link up to (for free) however this was closed in late 2002, details are still online wwwcache.ja.net

Re:Well, bugger.

[Limax Maximus]

I'm rather surprised its been lost for several reasons. The recent upgrade to 3 sites (one at a Janet core pop in Reading which has multiple gigs into it) was a huge boost for performance which wouldn't have happened if the mirror service was going to lose out quite so soon.

The experience of the UKMS team is huge, the connectivity to the UKMS nodes means that any one university should be no more than 4 or 5 hops from the nearest UKMS node and most importantly it is all within Janet. No matter how many links out side of the UK are lost you can still get your linux distro.

Re:Well, bugger.

[hardcode57]

It may be comprehensive, but I find it pretty slow, and generally download from continental Europe or even Australasia. I ahve to say I regard this as not much of a loss.

Re:Well, bugger.

[dipipanone]

Whereabouts are you located? That server has been able to saturate my bandwidth for the last eleven years, and I'm not on JANET -- just on a UK cable provider.

Re:Well, bugger.

[s_wardman]

For another the only people who will noticed the difference between mirror.ac.uk and any european FTP site are those on janet (joint academic network).

UK ISPs tend to more or less directly peer with JANET, through MaNAP and LINX for example, and so get speedy access to services hosted on JANET. Connections to hosts in the rest of Europe often have to go through at least an extra level of indirection, which makes a bit of a difference.

Re:Well, bugger.

[Willard B. Trophy]

It will be missed. I remember the (possibly pre-)HENSA days, frantically downloading Amiga Fish Disk images over a 9600 baud serial line from a vax to an Atari ST terminal emulator, and hoping that I wouldn't go over my 1000-block (500kB) disk quota. Now I'm on the other side of the pond, mirror.ac.uk can still often soak any pipe I care to use for downloads. It's very well connected.

Re:Well, bugger.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhear.html

Dupe

[avij]

Dupe ...

Email address

[elvum]

If you want to register your disapproval, try their "general enquiries" email address: info@jisc.ac.uk.

Re:Email address

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not, given that they're funding Eduserv to provide a mirror of "freely available technical software resources".

(Press release)

Re:Email address

[Anonymous Coward]

The search on that site returns a 404, lots of talk about 'branding' on the athens page and general marketing BULLSHIT! In addition it seems web pages from that server are sent as UTF-8 but the stated encoding in the markup is iso-8859-1.

• Invalid document encoding
• CSS errors
• Accessibility Failure

But as long as their branding is good, because thats what matters, not that they are violating the UK's Disability Discrimination Act which applies to web sites. Overall I see no evidence these people are competent to mirror software, I do however look forward to enjoying their 'branding'.

Re:Email address

[elvum]

RTFA: The new service will be greatly reduced compared to the current mirror.ac.uk.

Re:Email address

[theonlyholle]

Read again: they're talking about the service that they themselves want to offer, not the one that JISC is going to offer as the official service in the future. So basically they're saying: we have lost our official funding, but if we find some money, we can run a smaller-scale service. And JISC is awarding our contract to a new contractor - Lancaster & Kent certainly aren't in a position to make any statements about the service level of that new mirroring service.

Re:Email address

[kunudo]

to: info@jisc.ac.uk
from: random@guy.com
subject: beer

Dear maker of free beer. I noticed you said you can't spend any more money on free beer for everybody and are going to stop giving it away. I am MOST DISPLEASED WITH THIS. It is your duty to provide everyone with free beer.

Be happy it lasted, don't bitch about it. Some new great mirror will pop up in a short time, meanwhile, there are others.

Re:Email address

[Cecil]

If it were just some random guy providing this service, I'd agree with you. However, it's not some random guy, it's being funded by a government agency. And depending on how socialist your government is (rather a lot, in the UK) they may very well have a duty to provide you, the citizens, with free beer. Or more to the point, provide you with free information -- especially in the context of education and university research.

Re:Email address

[kunudo]

The random guy wasn't the provider (mirror), it was the complainer. But whatever... :)

Was this..

[IainMH]

Was this Piers Morgan's fault too?

Re:Was this..

[Maddog Batty]

Oh I do hope so. He needs as much stick as possible at the moment. To my knowledge he still hasn't admitted he is at fault.

For those outside the UK, you may want to take a look at the front page of todays Mirror

Re:Was this..

[gibbsjoh]

He's not at fault, fuck the government for forcing out yet another head of a media organisation that refuses to toe the line.

Re:Was this..

[AndrewHowe]

That's an um, interesting opinion. The government had no say in the matter. Morgan was fired because he fucked up. He should have been given the boot years ago, but he always seemed to get away with everything.
The government were entirely in the right in this case. I'm as anti-war as the next guy, but those pictures should never have been published.

Re:Was this..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Morgan publish those pictures unless he though they were from a reputable source? I shouldn't be the least bit surprised if the photos were created with the express purpose of discrediting them and by proxy, anyone who vouched for them in public.

It's a scam, a conspiracy to bring down a newspaper editor who has been very critical of the Government.

Re:Was this..

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

He fucked up by publishing photos taken by British Army personnel apparently doing things that the Red Cross and Amnesty International have been telling the government about for some time (and the government has admitted this) only for it to be show (by the Military police...) that the photos are faked (apparently by matching scratches on vehicles no less.)

So instead of it being soldiers engaged in acts that have been reported to the government already, it is solders faking sick and degrading behaviour and passing these off as real to a newspaper. Either because they are mentally disturbed psychotics who get a kick out that sort of behaviour or in an attempt to set up the newspaper.

Now call me picky, but one is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers while the other is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers. The only difference is that the mirror has paid for its opposition to the war by being set up - in either event it shows that there is something fundamentally broken in the discipline and behaviour of British soldiers.

Yes, Morgan isn't a nice man, I can't stand the guy, but what is going on here stinks of an attempt to midirect the public away from the very real and serious allegations that respectable organisations have been making about British behaviour in the gulf towards a mud-slinging match against a paper that has been a thorn in the side of the government since the start of last year.

Re:Was this..

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Appologies to non-UK folks -- this is completely off-topic. But its also an absolutely red hot topic for UKer's, so please don't mod as OT!!

<snip>...only for it to be show (by the Military police...) that the photos are faked (apparently by matching scratches on vehicles no less.)..<snip>

Going on the "by Military police" bit I'm guessing you doubt this. From what I've heard, the evidence is also the kit the solidiers in the photo where using and the type of vehicle in which photos were take were both incorrect -- not they stuff that was shipped to Iraq. This where some of the initial, fairly obvious (to those in the know... which *doesn't* include me btw!), errors. From this they've found the actual vehicle used... which I must admit to being suprised they could do... but given that all this evidence has been independantly corroborated *AND* the Mirror has agreed with it, I think we can be sure that *the photos WERE fake*!

So instead of it being soldiers engaged in acts that have been reported to the government already, it is solders faking sick and degrading behaviour and passing these off as real to a newspaper. Either because they are mentally disturbed psychotics who get a kick out that sort of behaviour or in an attempt to set up the newspaper.

Or perhaps because the paper *paid* for the photos? Maybe? Or perhaps there was political motivation? (I haven't heard this mentioned... yet... but it is another possibility)

Now call me picky, but one is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers while the other is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers.

LOL.. point taken, although *aledgedly* it might've perhaps been TA's who staged the pictures. Aledgedely. You might argue that they're essentially the same... but I suspect that a full time Soldier might disagree!

The only difference is that the mirror has paid for its opposition to the war by being set up - in either event it shows that there is something fundamentally broken in the discipline and behaviour of British soldiers.
In the case of the Mirror, thats the way these things go. It isn't the first time and it isn't the last, and although I detest Piers Morgan, he has simply screwed up. Largely, he's been unlucky, but it all goes with the territory; when this kind of stuff up happens, someone has to go. But on the plus side, *everyone* hates him, so no problems there!! :)

As for this bit about "something fundamentally broken in the discipline and behaviour of British solidiers", I think you're way out of line there. In any organisation there *are* going to be bad apples and you know there's some horrible shit going on over there. But this "news" report blatantly smeared the good name of the British solidiers and it was compeltely wrong to do that and has put lives at risk. There fact that "this is the type of thing that might also be going on" is besides the point... it implied that this kind of behaviour was rife, when it clearly isn't (even the reports of abuses that do exist do make this point).

The Mirror "report" was fundamentally flawed news reporting, and had very serious repercusions. Reporting on actual events is fine, but the Mirror report didn't do that. It used made up, false information.

Misleading post?

[Sits]

My understanding is that the *Universities of Kent and Lancaster* are no longer providing a mirroring service. There will be some sort of mirroring service provided to JANET users by a different third party. I think there was a tendering process and JANET decided to go with someone else this year.

However, I'm not sure that it's clear whether the new mirror will:

• Carry all the mirrors the old mirror.ac.uk service did
• Provide the variety of protocols the old mirror did (http/ftp/rsync)
• Will be accessible to non JANET connections

The last point is the real sticking issue. Can anyone else clarify things? Either way mirror.ac.uk (as it is currently) will be sorely missed. It's provided an extremely useful service over the years and I'm sure it's saved Swansea Uni a lot of transatlantic traffic over the years :)

Re:Misleading post?

[neilmoore67]

I think there will be a new mirror sponsored by the same organisation. However mirror.ac.uk are deleting all their content as we speak I believe, which isn't a problem in itself but some of that content cannot be found elsewhere easily.

It's a shame that they couldn't have been a little more organised in order to change providers seamlessly. It seems that the only people who _don't_ have access to the current mirror are going to be the new mirror providers!

Re:Misleading post?

[Anonymous Coward]

The limit of the UK gov's commitment to public IT infrastructure is putting the letter 'e' infront of common words. Public sector Microsoft weenie creep.

The library service should be mirroring both software and media, there was talk of been legally required to archive websites with the library. How I'm supposed to archive my custom database driven dynamic website (realised in C) is beyond me but I would be happy to let them host all my bandwidth draining content.

Re:Misleading post?

[Technonotice_Dom]

However mirror.ac.uk are deleting all their content as we speak I believe

According to the mirror.ac.uk announcement, they'll delete sites before the 1st August by their request.

We are, however, in the process of informing source sites of the end of contract and will, at their request, discontinue and delete mirrors prior to this date. [emphasis my own]

Where'd you get that bit of info from?

It seems only fair to me

[fr0dicus]

Much of the software hosted here is now big business, where in the past it was of purely academic/enthusiast interest. Linux in particular (I bet linux .iso and kernel source downloads make up a fair percentage of their bandwidth) is now firmly established and on companies' roadmaps. Why should University budgets foot the bill for distributing Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE's software? A local mirror for student access only would seem more appropriate, with mirror.ac.uk providing mirrors of new and highly active projects.

Re:It seems only fair to me

[evilviper]

Why should University budgets foot the bill for distributing Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE's software?

Just because they don't survive on donations, does that make it bad?

They may sell a product, but what is mirrored is not something they make money on. They are giving their ISOs away for free, and what they are giving away is benefitial to the public.

It's pretty much the same for OpenOffice... Should it not be mirrored just because it is headed by Sun?

Re:It seems only fair to me

[TheRaven64]

How about because it saves them money? My university pays quite a lot for transatlantic bandwidth, but it does not pay anything (beyond the flat rate connection charge) for bandwidth between sites on JANET. If I download the latest release of Fedora (for example) that's 2GB (or more if I get the source CDs as well) which either comes from mirror.ac.uk (at 2MB/s) or from an external source. If it comes from mirror.ac.uk, they don't pay for it. If it comes from anywhere else, they do.

Re:It seems only fair to me

[Donny Smith]

>My university pays quite a lot for transatlantic bandwidth

Really? I thought most universities don't pay such charges. For example the place where I'm from has country-wide academic network that's connected to major ISPs via peering agreements so it doesn't have to pay any traffic charges.

Re:It seems only fair to me

[elvum]

Your university is on the American side of the Atlantic, isn't it?

Re:It seems only fair to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually UK universities no longer pay directly for transatlantic bandwidth. A couple of years ago (maybe more now) an executive decision was made to stop charging in proportion to bandwidth used. Instead a flat fee is administered to cover all the long-distance usage.

Usage levels are still monitored, and I found an administrative error in that data which, had the old charging metric been in place, could have led to a serious financial screw-up. That's why I know the charging isn't used any more, they mentioned it in their reply when I reported the error. [FWIW the error was due to MS Excel's unexpected behaviour with certain inputs, and I found it because Gnumeric reports the discrepancy]

Don't imagine for a minute that University's are not paying at all though. They're just no longer paying on a per-byte basis. If the absence of mirror.ac.uk results in increased contention for outbound links, JISC will have to obtain more funding to pay for bigger links, or universities will experience reduced quality of service. Neither of these is good, right?

Re:It seems only fair to me

[Anonymous Coward]

"but it does not pay anything (beyond the flat rate connection charge) for bandwidth between sites on JANET"

I don't think that's true any more - they changed the pricing arrangements recently so that universities pay for bandwidth to JANET sites as well.

Re:It seems only fair to me

[julesh]

All British universities pay traffic charges for anything that goes outside of the country.

Find a use for mydoom-infected machines?

[CdBee]

If one were particularly unethical, one might use the remote exploits in unpatched, infected Windows machines to install FTP servers and make a distributed download network for mirroring opensource software

It'd be illegal but it has a certain karmic appeal.

Re:Find a use for mydoom-infected machines?

[evilviper]

You don't want an FTP server. You need something at-least Gnutella-like.

If you have a million FTP servers, all sharing the same files, even if somebody wants the files, they aren't going to be able to scan every FTP server on every IP address.

If you use a Gnutella-style system, each node could have a different set of files, and it would be quite easy to find them. It wouldn't be illegial for somebody to have file downloadable via a Gnutella URN, but listing compromized hosts would show that the owners of a website have some extra knowledge of the worm, that they shouldn't have unless they are involved.

Re:Find a use for mydoom-infected machines?

[pjt33]

It'd be illegal but it has a certain karmic appeal.

Until it rebounds and is used as a propaganda weapon against OSS.

Re:Find a use for mydoom-infected machines?

[0x0d0a]

A worm that installed Freenet nodes would be much more effective, as this would increase effective bandwidth, anonymity, and disk space on Freenet, without causing the issues of "who has rights to write to the machine" that FTP would produce.

Site's getting slow...

[nacturation]

Anybody got a mirror? :)

Freecache, Mirror services

[tronicum]

I wonder why mirror business seems to be such a big problem. All the university mirrors and they seem to competiting about having mirros. What about a dedicated cluster from a group of universities in each network? Or something like a proxy group.

Beside the universities large IP network operators should have mirrors at least for their own customers as this would reduce their bandwith.

See also at the /. article about freecache, an project from archive.org

Re:Freecache, Mirror services

[wdlowry]

I wonder why mirror business seems to be such a big problem. All the university mirrors and they seem to competiting about having mirros.

I think the sheer amount of projects and their sizes presents a lot of the problem. At my university I've been given a lot of old hardware to create our internal mirror. 500GB goes fast when you get all of Debian or Fedora. I have to constantly evaluate what is important, since I don't have the funds to throw more storage at the box.

If I could just get my hands on our new NetApp...

Will someone tell the uk government

[pagaman]

www.mirror.ac.uk != www.mirror.co.uk

Re:Will someone tell the uk government

[IceFreak2000]

Damn, why do I never have mod points when I need them? I'd give you +1 Funny for that entry if I could...

Re:Will someone tell the uk government

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, australian here, maybe lost on the yanks... but that was quite amusing.

Damn them!

[caluml]

Time to run mirrorselect -i on all my boxes then. And yeah, I do just use one. How's that for redundancy?!

Sad news

[orbitalia]

I used to go to Lancaster Uni where the physical mirror was located and knew some of the guys involved in it when it was known as hensa). It was a valuable service back then in the early internet days and still is, fantastic bandwidth, and a well structured archive of only decent software, no fluff, it was alot more than just a mirror. I can't really understand how they are going to save money or resources this way either, as someone pointed out all its going to do is put pressure on the SuperJanet interconnects.

Re:Sad news

[Limax Maximus]

Likewise I did my degree at Lancaster and know a lot of the past and current Mirror Service staff however any service such as UKMS is doomed when it has more managers than technical people. UKMS had a ratio of about 2:1 in Lancaster, I don't know about Kent. Its just a pity it is going just before Lancaster gets its new fast 'net connection. Perhaps a better way to save money by JANet is to provide porn mirrors at every institution...

Re:Sad news

[pajs]

Kent was mostly technical staff. The mirror service as a whole certainly wasn't that top heavy. Although slightly out of date, you can see the mirror's staff and positions here

new mirror

[SkunkPussy]

so when does the new miror start?

Obligatory Rocky Horror Joke...

[elleomea]

Dammit, JANET!

sunsite.org.uk

[TarpaKungs]

You could do worse...

Now a new server (as of this year) with kind thanks to [well earned plugs]:

Sun Microsystems - hardware
Thus (Demon) - Network feed
Veritas - Software
Brocade - Hardware
for their contunuing sponsorship.

and of course, the Department of Computing, Imperial College London for
housing and feeding it.

Currently it has 1.8 TB of publicly accessible mirrors and supports the following access mechanisms:

http://www.sunsite.org.uk/ [See here for full details]
ftp://ftp.sunsite.org.uk/
rsync://rsync .sunsite.org.uk/

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they still allow read-only NFS mounts?

It was utterly awesome when I was at university with my little Linux box - I'd do a 'df' and sit back in amazement. :-)

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[RussHart]

Yeah, I'm with the parent on this one. When I was a student at Imperial, I never quite understood why it was that all these people kept upon accessing mirror.ac.uk, when is was slower than sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk (as it was at the time).

What would be sensible is for the JISC to give Imperial some money to help towards it's support, and re-direct the mirror.ac.uk URL towards it, it'd be well worth it for all...

R

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[silverfuck]

I'm in an Imperial hall of residence, and for me sunsite.org.uk is pathetically slow - just started testing and I'm getting 4-7 k/s. This is in stark contrast to mirror.ac.uk, which would usually saturate the 10Mbps network connection at 800+ k/s

Why? Surely it must be on JANET too??

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[TarpaKungs]

Hi

I don't run Sunsite - but I work with the people who do. The answer is no - not at the present time.
SMB used to exist on the previous version - this isn't supported at present either. (We're now on Sunsite 3).

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[TarpaKungs]

Well - that would depend which hall. You see, the primary route to sunsite.org.uk is
over Demon's network - so if you are in the halls that are supplied by whichever telco has the contract (I forget)
you are probably going to take the circuitous route.

If you are within DoC's network then you will get the short route.

If you are anywhere else in Imperial - I'm not sure. Hopefully the short route but I cannot say that with certainty.

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[LichP]

I believe the only place you can currently get fast connectivity to Sunsite is within the DoC network. I've used the mirror outside the DoC but within college, and have had disappointing performance (vs mirror.ac.uk, for example). I understand that the current bandwidth situation will be improved soon, though. Also, I would hope that ICT and the DoC can sort out their routing, it really shouldn't be dificult at all to make Sunsite internally accessible to college.

At least Sunsite is back, though. I remember physically seeing the kit in the DoC a while back, but we still had a long wait before it came online.

Re:sunsite.org.uk

[martin]

but only a single 100mbs link - ie slow in comparisson to the link a couple of years ago (lots of 45mBs connections) and alot less coverage and bandwidth than mirror.ac.uk

Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[JoeBaldwin]

The Daily Mirror (now just The Mirror) is a left-wing tabloid newspaper in the UK. Last month, the paper (which was until yesterday edited by Piers Morgan) published pictures of alleged abuse in Iraq which are now widely believed to be fake. Morgan quit last night and has not apologised, while his paper has.

I used to have some respect for the guy, but fuck him now-he's dragged his paper's reputation through the mud and he's making a bad name for everybody who was every against this war. If you're in the UK and want a decent anti-war left-wing newspaper, try here, here or maybe even (for the insanely left wing) here.

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Spudley]

Morgan didn't quit - he was fired. And from what I hear, he had to be escorted from the building by security.

The Mirror newspaper will struggle to regain it's credibility after this. (not that it has much to start with, IMHO)

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[JoeBaldwin]

That's odd. The BBC is reporting he was fired, CNN says he quit. Firing sounds more likely out of the two though...

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it was a case of the old:

Boss: "YOU'RE FIRED!"
Employee: "No I aint, cos I QUIT!!!"

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[margal]

As far as I know, he was fired after a corporate meeting with his US share holders, and then escorted from the building by security. This is a serious blow for the truth in the UK. These pictures depicted an event that happened, they were reconstructions, not fakes. That is the real issue. This war is having a serious toll on the UK media. First the BBC, now the Mirror...

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Anonymous Coward]

he quit technicaly but in all sense he was kicked out the door as that morning he said he would not so read into what you will.

cheers

Russ

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Anonymous Coward]

He was fired, maybe not in a "collect you're stuff and get out" kinda way, but he was pushed out the door (possibly literally) and that's all we need to know.

The Mirror has been a joke for quite a while know. I realised when the whole Iraq thing was comming about and the march against it was being planned, since then the newspaper has been so whacky and out of touch I've literally laughed at several articles I've read (not through buying the newspaper - but by picking it up on the train etc).

The Mirror is a joke, it was so desperate to believe these pictures it didn't bother to check `em, now it's paid the price.

Now that's 2 news organisations that were anti-war which have had their fingers burnt: The BBC, and now The Mirror.

Today is a good day :)

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is today a good day?

Its a distraction, nothing more.

A distraction from the real abuses reported repeatedly by the Red Cross.
A distraction from the numbers of troops and civilians dying all over Iraq.
A distraction from the reports of the complete breakdown of infrastructure in Iraq.
And worst of all a distraction from the two fucknuts responsible for all of this - Blair and Bush.

Yep, what a great fucking day!

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Spudley]

(this is going *way* off topic, but I feel this needed a response... albeit that you're probably just trolling)

This is a serious blow for the truth in the UK. These pictures depicted an event that happened, they were reconstructions, not fakes.

You do realise that it was old news when the pictures were published? The story had already been run in all the papers (including the Mirror) several months earlier, and there was already an investigation into the allegations (which is still on-going).

The only reason it became newsworthy again was the existence of the pictures. If they had been real, they would have been explosive - they would have helped prove the case for the investigation, and also added the dimension of a soldier photographing the event, which itself could be construed as abuse.

However, since the pictures were staged, they did not achieve either of these points.

In fact, since the story had already been in the news, many people assumed that this was a whole new story. Their appearance the very day after the American photos first showed up was also highly suspicious (given that they were fakes, this really does add toward making it look like a malicious hoax), and had the effect of making them appear to many to be part of the same story.

However, the basic point is that the Mirror committed a serious journalistic sin by printing staged photographs and claiming they were real (repeatedly, and in the face of opposition from just about every angle). Piers Morgan has been on TV every day in the last two weeks to say that they are definitely absolutely positively genuine. He painted himself into a hole, and the only possible way out once his argument was shown to be untrue was for him to leave the newspaper. Whether it was by sacking or resigning was his choice, but his position was untenable either way.

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[margal]

I remember Piers Morgan saying "I am 100% certain that these photographs depict an actual event". That is slightly different to your claim. Also, the claims in the paper have brought forward the Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, that Blair and his cabinet claim they never got, as well as now led to the arrest of four British soldiers after they publicized "Soldier C". Piers Morgan had guts, and I respect him for that, he did the right thing.

Re:Explanation of joke for Non-Brits

[Spudley]

I remember Piers Morgan saying "I am 100% certain that these photographs depict an actual event". That is slightly different to your claim.

He only started saying it that way toward the end of this week. Up until then, he was adamant they were authentic.

Also, the claims in the paper have brought forward the Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, that Blair and his cabinet claim they never got

Now you see, good journalism would have been if Morgan had made *that* his front page story rather than the pictures. That is an important story.

But I disagree with you - I think this story with the faked pictures has actually taken away from the real story. The RC report would have come out anyway sooner or later (probably soon, given all the other stories of US soldiers). But what has actually happened is that the true story has been almost drowned out of the news by the fake one.

However, we are now completely off topic, so that's the last I'm going to say on this.

If its fast and reliable

[CptChipJew]

Then it wasn't being hit as hard it should have been anyways. A smart operation is going to put out every bit of that pipe they're pating for.

Re:If its fast and reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

Shockingly, mirror sites don't just flood the network with data...people "request" those files. Its kind of hard to guess exactly how much bandwidth one would need over a long term.

Re:If its fast and reliable

[Sinus0idal]

You obviously aren't quite understanding just how much bandwidth SuperJanet has then...

funding

[curator_thew]

This sort of funding should come from the people that it's relevant for: i.e. the owners of intercontinential links, or it should be cooperatively funded, say to be co-located at a large interconnect -- as these people wear the costs of non-mirrors.

It's not relevant for the academic community to fund these things: doing so is a historical throwback to when the networks were largely academic, and most of the users were too. That's not how it is now, and personally I'd rather see the money used to support academic concerns, not a service increasingly used by non-academic.

I think if anyone is upset about this: direct complaints to people that should be doing something about it (i.e. exchanges/interconnects, international link providers).

Re:funding

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of funding should come from the people that it's relevant for: i.e. the owners of intercontinential links, or it should be cooperatively funded, say to be co-located at a large interconnect -- as these people wear the costs of non-mirrors.

Why should they fund it? They get paid more if people have to use their links more. Where as for the academics (ie, people on the JANET network), they have to pay if the traffic goes outside the network, but not otherwise. Therefore it makes sense for people on this network to fund a good mirror.

Re:funding

[curator_thew]

> Where as for the academics (ie, people on the JANET network), they have to pay if the traffic goes outside the network, but not otherwise.

I didn't mean to preclude anyone setting up a mirror for internal use, i.e. available only to JANET users, where it's justified.

But to support a general UK wide mirror that also chews up incoming JANET bandwidth, I don't think that's a good spend of money and effort.

> Why should they fund it? They get paid more if people have to use their links more.

I mean the people funding the link, not the telecommunications carriers. I also mean that it's in the interest of an exchange or interconnect, because all members pay for transit changes, so they all co-operatively have an interest in co-locating such mirrors at the exchange to reduce transit costs and provide better level of service to their own customers because of high rate of access to the mirror, even if transit across the interconnect is at a lower bandwidth.

Re:funding

[ollyg]

you numscull. who funds the 'academic community' then? why British taxpayers, of course.

and who benefits from mirror.ac.uk (apart from .ac.uk)? why British Internet users, of course.

in other words, it's wholly appropriate that JISC run a publicly available mirror service. myself - sad to see the current service go, but without seeing the replacement (apart from the press releases) there's not much more to say.

Well, now...

[nordicfrost]

This should be a hard hitting blow to the NeoCons saying "SEE!! Even the brittonians are doing it!". At least until the next barrage of embarrasing photos arrives...

Who cares?

[Donny Smith]

>See, that's just irritating.

Why? Who cares - it's just another FTP or whatever site.

>That's going to have quite a knock-on effect to all of the software hosted there, particularly a lot of the free stuff

Actually this is a good example of "free" - someone was actually paying for this so it actually wasn't free, it was more like a social service.
Still, like I said above, who cares - the very fact that the whole thing is a _mirror_ means the files hosted there exist somewhere else on the Net.
And that being (largely?) free software, I'm sure the "customers" will adjust their downloading habits accordingly. It's not like they've got a right to complain about anything.

Why would anyone feel upset about this - someone was shelling out a few bucks for this thing and now they can't/don't want any more - that happens to thousands of people/projects every day. No big deal.

Re:Who cares?

[dipipanone]

Actually this is a good example of "free" - someone was actually paying for this so it actually wasn't free, it was more like a social service.

Not really. This was hosted by the UK academic network, so it was paid for by a combination of tuition fees and UK taxes.

The primary beneficiaries would be people studying or working at UK universities, or people living in the UK -- ie, the very people who are paying for it, albeit indirectly. Yes, other people can also make use of it, but that's part of the principle of reciprocity that the whole of the internet was originally based on. That's the basis on which the content was provided that is populating the mirrors.

Why would anyone feel upset about this

Because it's an inconvenience? Because it's short sighted? Because it's a poor use of resources? Because it's yet another example of bean counters who don't understand the value of the thing that they are cutting?

Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

he may not be directly at fault, but he is (was) responsible for the content of the paper. Tough shit.

In Other News...

[wan-fu]

Slashdot announces that it will help ease the burden on mirror.ac.uk by mirroring its own posts.

Mods on crack?

[pjt33]

The grandparent should be Offtopic and the parent Insightful, not the other way round.

Re:haven't you learned ANYTHING at all from the pa

[m_maximus]

There are pleanty of things that can be got for free, it's just that none of them can ever be depended on.

shame but kernel.org was always late anyway

[tota]

I always end up using another mirror for downloading my kernels because mirror.ac.uk is always one version behind...

Re:shame but kernel.org was always late anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Really.. Looking at it right now, 2.4.26 and 2.6.6 are both currently on the service.

Maybe it's Freecache?

[randomErr]

Maybe when Freecache.org was announced on Slashdot it started pulling to many resources from around the globe, including Mirror.ac.uk. If it faultered under that load I could see anyone wanting to pull funding. Of course I'm just speculating that Freecavhe is using Mirror.ac.uk are a resource. Anyone know for sure?

Re:Maybe it's Freecache?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope I dont think so, last quaters figures showed that the service shipped more data than ever, approx 108TB of data , thats up 33TB from the previous quater.

JISC has announced the replacement provider

[fdobbie]

JISC announced on the 17th April that they have awarded the contract to Eduserv.

The most interesting bit of the blurb is:

From an end user perspective, the most significant change to the service will be that it will only offer freely available technical software resources. Scholarly and Academic resources will no longer be mirrored. It is expected that the current portfolio of technical resources will continue to be mirrored and that any inconvenience to users during the changeover of service will be kept to an absolute minimum.

Having said that, I'm somewhat sceptical awarding the contract based on cost won't lead to a degradation of service. Whatever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

REVOLUTION!!

[margal]

they've lied and lied, first the war in iraq, then tutition fees, then foundation hospitals, the hutton report and now they're "scaling" back mirror.ac.uk. IF THIS ISN'T A CASE FOR REVOLUTION, WHAT IS?!?111

Let us Americans** contribute to it!

[ShatteredDream]

I use the UK Mirror service all the time because it gets me the best download rates. It's often a lifesaver when it comes to getting the fastest rates for things like Yellow Dog Linux. I'd definitely contribute.

**For the masses who are as ignorant of American culture as many Americans are of much of the rest of the world, Yank/Yankee/Yanqui and American are not interchangeable. If you are ever below the Mason-Dixon line in America, do not call anyone a Yankee unless they have a New England accent. (This message brought to you by too many foreigners who have called me a Yank, being that I'm from Dixie)

Re:Let us Americans** contribute to it!

[Marcus Green]

Words have a different meaning in different parts of the world. Thus for instance the British comedian Peter Cooke when he was in the US said that he was rarely seen without a fag in his mouth. People familiar with the UK understood this as a reference to his smoking habits.

Re:Let us Americans** contribute to it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stop calling you Yanks if you promise never, never, to use the hateful term "Brit" of a citizen of the UK. Deal?

So..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you stfu redneck?

Re:haven't you learned ANYTHING at all from the pa

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, good point!! - grab it while you can sorta thing huh?

No acedemic stuff?

[shish]

the most significant change to the service will be that it will only offer freely available technical software resources. Scholarly and Academic resources will no longer be mirrored.

So I can keep using gigabytes of bandwidth running "emerge sync && emerge -uD world" every day, but I can't get at some research PDFs? Are they really saying that?

Times move on

[Julian Morrison]

Those mirror sites were created when dial-up was the best connectivity Joe Ordinary cold expect, and a few megs of hard disk to store stuff in. Nowadays they look like an anachronism to me. Serve your stuff from your multigigabyte broadband machine, put up a torrent, put it on sourceforge. There realy isn't any need for big mirrors.

Unusual language

[RockDoctor]

This could turn out to be quite an inconvenience for the UK, as the mirror.ac.uk service has proven itself very fast and reliable.

Ah, this is obviously some strange new usage of the words "fast" and "reliable", which is not in normal language.
OK, I'll admit that mirror.ac.uk is always up, but in multiple attempts to get gzipped isos from it, I've never (repeat : "never") once got better than 28kbyte/s from it, when my line is capable of about 50kbyte/s. And I've only had about 1 iso in 20 download successfully - typically the browser window tells me the remote end has stopped responding. Naturally I use it overnight, when those pesky researchers who it's intended for are mostly tucked up in bed.

Re:Unusual language

[tomknight]

Heh... here at King's College London, I'm getting 550 kilobytes per second on my download of the SuSE 9.1 live CD. Swwet enough for me ;-) Tom.

more info

[Chris_Keene]

More stats and info about mirror service found: Data report, Trends Report and Annual Report.

From the JISC Monitoring Unit, also based at Kent.

they have computers in the U.K.?

[MMHere]

Amazing!