[rescue] FTP site for archive of _all_ old platforms on it's way

[John Floren]

On 6/16/07, Magnus <magnus at yonderway.com> wrote:
> John Floren wrote:
> > I think you guys may be overestimating the number of people who would
> > be seeding all these files.
> It doesn't take many.  Every individual seeder helps to defray the
> bandwidth hit to the original seeder.  Having a number of simultaneous
> leeches even helps, as the leeches leech off of each other at the same
> time that they are leeching off of the seeds.
>
> When a dataset is first announced, it's likely to have a bunch of
> leeches at once.  They will all help shoulder the load.  When interest
> trails off and only one or two at a time come, the hit to a seeder with
> no peers is going to be on-par with the hit an ftp server would take.
>
> > How many people do you think are out there
> > who really want a copy of <little-known PDP-11 OS> in the first place,
> > let alone are willing to torrent it and then leave the torrent running
> > for an indefinite length of time?
> >
> Try grabbing the torrent for one of the oddball architecture betas of
> CentOS Linux sometime, that hasn't been touched in like a year or two
> and has been abandoned by the maintainers, and see how many seeds jump
> on.  You will be surprised (I sure was).
>
> > FTP, at least, I can see that the file is there and available, and my
> > access to it isn't controlled by the number of other people who have
> > downloaded it.
> As long as the original party continues to have an interest in hosting
> the data, he can continue to seed it.  Your access is unhindered.  If
> he's lost interest in hosting it, the ftp site would be just as likely
> to go away.

I guess there is a point I didn't consider--if Ethan has his server
seeding all the files, then yeah, they'll always be available, and at
worst his bandwidth usage will match that of a straight FTP server.
I'm too used to getting a torrent and finding 0 seeders and 2
leechers... ah well.
Good luck, Ethan!


John
-- 
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