check fastest mirror

[Auke Kok]

Zbigniew Luszpinski wrote:
>> just a suggestion, but would a topological field in the mirror list be
>> helpful?
> 
> Yes and no. Tele-links, their distance and thickness may be misleading when 
> trying to think looking on globe map. I looked at some Internet maps and must 
> rethink some things now because I'm little surprised.
> 
>> we can -for instance- say for each mirror whether it is in one of the
>> following regions:
>>
>> NAW - North America West
>> NAE - North America East
>> SAM - South America
>> EUW - Europe West
>> EUE - Europe East
> 
> Oh no, not again :-). Iron curtain was broken in 1989 and now Europe looks a 
> little different. Now there is EU/nonEU countries. I'm EU citizen :-)

west and east are terms that you can find on compasses. compasses are not 
discriminatory for using these terms. they didn't change them into "up there", 
"on the side where the sun sets" "down below" etc. after 1970.

on-topic: no big deal, you know best in which sub-region you fit, so you would 
choose EUW. most likely that would give you a lot of mirrors in germany, 
france, poland, so you would be happy.

>> It would be trivial to add weights to servers within this region for the
>> preprogrammed mirrors and have the user enter a single region preference
>> (hell we could even use dvd-region numbers :)).
> 
> Bingo! Very good idea! I vote for!
> However country selector would be a little better, but DVD regions are easier 
> to maintain.

the more you split it up the worse it is to maintain. We should never ever go 
beyond about 10 regions. this is why the dvd regions work ok (there's only 6), 
but I would be okay working with 10 or so, it makes sense to split the two 
large regions up in two.

Auke