Question Regarding Update Mirrors

[craig10x]

Although i seem to usually get a pretty good speed when i do the updates from the update manager, out of curiousity, i clicked the button that says "find the best server" which i assume looks for the mirror that should work best from my location...

It selected "University of Waterloo" which is in Ontario, Canada...I live in New York City for location reference...does that sound appropriate?
Wasn't sure if i should leave it on that or switch to a different one...any suggestions?

And where is that default one located that they have it preset to? (before i let the "find" button scan and change it)....

Thanks

[viking777]

This is all a bit of smoke and mirrors isn't it. It is just a snapshot of the best server now, and given that your post shows a time of about 9am UK time and you live in NY I would think that at 4am local time you would get a pretty good response from just about anywhere in the US or Canada!

If you were really serious about it I guess you would have to do this test before every update which would be a bit of a chore.

As for where the default server is I am not sure, it you opened /etc/apt/sources.list and copied the address you are using then put it into nslookup to change it to an ip address and finally put it into liveipmap.com you would find out. Here is my example:

Code: Select all

nslookup packages.linuxmint-fr.net

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: packages.linuxmint-fr.net
Address: 87.98.160.233

then: http://www.liveipmap.com gives:

Screenshot.png (180.01 KiB) Viewed 528 times

[craig10x]

Very interesting
So it's in france..well, yeah i guess the one it "picked for me" when i hit the button and it scanned to find me the best location, is certainly a lot closer...Ontario as opposed to France from NYC.....

How can you tell which are in the United States? Or does it really make one heck of a difference?

[GeneC]

Hey Craig

Like you I was looking for the "best server". I am in Maine, USA. I also got the one in Canada. BUT, I have done this several times, and gotten different "best servers", once was one in Germany -- go figure? Like Viking said it depends on the time of day, traffic flow, et. Canada seems the best so far.

[CiaW]

Very interesting
So it's in france..well, yeah i guess the one it "picked for me" when i hit the button and it scanned to find me the best location, is certainly a lot closer...Ontario as opposed to France from NYC.....

How can you tell which are in the United States? Or does it really make one heck of a difference?

When I open software sources and then select 'download from' and 'other' it brings up a list of available locations (for the linuxmint mirrors), and there's only 1 in the US, that being: mirrors.insync.za.net. When I select 'choose best server' it also picks the one on Canada. I'm in the eastern part of the state of Washington in the USA, so I guess that may indeed be closer than the one US option. I know for sure it's faster for me than the one in France.

[craig10x]

Oh...cool...then i will leave it on the Canada one and see how it goes...the default one was pretty good most of the time but it will be interesting to see how the canada one will be...maybe the "system" knows best

[viking777]

No guys you are misunderstanding me. My server is in France cos I live in the UK, but it is highly unlikely that anyone with a US locale will have a French main server, you have to follow the steps I gave in my last post to find out where your local 'Main' server is.

Out of interest:
Stoke-on -Trent to Paris straight line distance 346mls

New York(bronx) to Waterloo Ontario straight line distance 384mls.