Updates are now extremely slow

[Guan]

Up until recently, updates being pulled from the repos came down pretty fast and easily. In the last few weeks however, the pace of download has slowed to a crawl. I've tried running the server test, and even when the "best" server is selected, it still downloads at a crawl. My suspecion is that the Chinese gov't has made some changes to how the Chinese intranet interacts with the global web, hence the slowdown. I guess what I'm asking is that if a repo mirror could be set up inside of China, so that chinese LM users won't need to use VPN's to get timely updates.

[oobetimer]

Servers connections are overloaded because Ubuntu 12.04 and Mint 13 are released ..

[Guan]

That is an encouraging thought, but this issue started after LM12 was released but some time before LM13 or even Ubuntu 12.04 were released... I think. If you are right the situation should clear itself up in a few weeks. If not, then I'm still at square one. I've noticed that debian has mainland china and hong kong ftp mirrors, so it should be possible I think, providing that the powers that be warrant it's existence.

[Guan]

Well, it's been a few weeks now and the situation hasn't really improved. Even when I try to connect to the one mainland china ftp update server it's very slow and doesn't resolve all the repos. I've also tried Japan and Taiwan, still no dice. I hope the powers that be read this and think about adding a solid server inside of mainland china. There is a robust and strong linux using community here, and it's tough when you can only reliably update using a vpn connection.

[Guan]

I have managed to get it working for the moment by switching which of the US servers that the updates are pulled down from. It's still quite slow but it does work. However, I found when I was playing around with Bodhi Linux the other day that Ubuntu has many servers inside of china, some even hosted on 163.com (Big website locally in China). I am wonder if the Linux Mint guys could not do a similar setup. When I was updating Bodhi, I was getting a fantastic connection rate from the 163.com server.