RE: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?

["Gary R. Van Sickle" <g dot r dot vansickle at worldnet dot att dot net>]

[snip]
> >> Ping time would probably be rather unfriendly to the mirrors :-)
> >
> > Would this seriously be a concern?  I can't imagine that the cygwin
> > user base is that update-happy that they'd be flooding download
> > servers (which would have to serve them multimegabytes anyway) with
> > pings.  Especially when we still have folks going, "Hi, I recently
> > upgraded from B6.  Why did you break everything?".
>
> I don't know. But pinging 30 to 40 servers seems rather a heavyweight
> solution.
>

On-line multiplayer games do exactly that all the time, so unless I'm missing
something here, I really can't see it being a problem.  Unless the "pings" in
the games aren't real internet pings or something....

> >> I was thinking treeview Continent/Country/Site.
> >>
> >
> > NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  NOT MORE
> > TREEVIEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> >
> > ;-)
> >
> > Seriously, what I'd really like to see us work towards is a UI-less
> > mirror selection system as the default.  99% of users couldn't give a
> > whit which server the stuff is coming from, as long as it works.
> > Hence, a UI can only cause grief for all involved, and the more
> > involved it is, the more grief it will cause.
>
> Nevertheless, wouldn't you agree that the treeview I proposed above would be
> an improvement over the current listview?

Yes, but I think it adds needless complexity to that particular interface, and
doesn't solve the real problem, which is, "which of these selections gets me the
stuff fastest?".  Physical location gives you a hint, but the server across the
street may be a 386 with a 14.4 modem and a dozen other Cygwinners downloading,
while the one across the ocean may have a pipe the size of... well, I can't
think of an appropriate similie, but a really fat pipe and no waiting.  I think
the best and easiest solution here would be to simply ping each server in the
list, sort by ping, and display "server.name.here | ping_in_ms" in a two-column
list box (which would probably have to be hand-rolled).  I know ping isn't going
to give you a definitive answer to the question either, but it is one step
closer, and probably the best that we could realistically do.

--
Gary R. Van Sickle
Brewer.  Patriot.