Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 06:54:24PM +1100, Robert Collins wrote: >In terms of UI, I *suggest* the following: >* Make the current list box two column and sortable (there is a MS >control that can do this.) >* In the second column, display N/A and a title of response time by >default. >* Provide a "Test mirror speed" button. FWIW, I think this sounds very nice. cgf
RE: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
> David Starks-Browning wrote: > > >OK, good point. As long as nothing *blocks* waiting for pings to > >finish, I guess I don't care if setup pings. > > > That is indeed a *must*, as many router filter echo reply packets, so at > least some server's reply would never be received, and moreover UDP > packets may be lost with no problem (no automatic re-transmission at all). > Sheesh, either you guys need to start playing more online games, or I gotta start playing fewer ;-). The UI wouldn't be blocking waiting for pings to come back; how the games do it is they actually ping a handful of servers all at once (with a suitable timeout, eg 1-2 secs) and fill the moral equivalent of a list box with the servers as they respond. At any time you can either cancel, or pick one that's shown up and go to town. That's pretty much what I'm envisioning for this UI, which again I think we should in any case be moving towards "hiding" from the average and uninterested user behind an "advanced" button or something, and doing an automated server-picking based on ping and even-server-load-distribution considerations. > Different problem: we need either raw sockets (bad, bad, bad) or the > ICMP.dll, which is available also on Win9x if some releaseof IE is > installed, AFAIR. I have it on good authority that IE 4.0 or better is a stated prerequisite for setup. -- Gary R. Van Sickle Brewer. Patriot.
Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Lapo Luchini wrote: > David Starks-Browning wrote: > > >If I may interject, I hope setup never does this automatically, not > >even the first time it runs. Can an arbitrary sort order be > >acceptable by default, unless the user wants to sort by ping > >performance? > > What harm can do a single 50-byte UDP packet when there is high > probabiilty that a real "connection" needshundreds of big TCP packets > just to download setup.bz2? > Less harm than "people" using always the first mirror as they never > re-order it, imho. Sure, let's randomly reorder the list the first time through, if only to reduce the load on the first mirror in mirrors.lst. :-D Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_[EMAIL PROTECTED] ZZZzz /,`.-'`'-. ;-;;,_[EMAIL PROTECTED] |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk! -- /usr/games/fortune
Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
David Starks-Browning wrote: > On Wednesday 22 Jan 03, Igor Pechtchanski writes: >>> IMO, the best solution would be adding a "sort by best bandwidth" >>> button or something similar to the mirror display. Then, setup can >>> query all of the mirrors and put the "closest" one at top. It >>> could save that order in some file locally, too. >>> >>> cgf >> >> Yep, and have a "Re-ping" button that the user could press to >> re-evaluate the bandwidth. This way, the only time it happens >> automatically is the first time setup is run, and after that it's >> under user control. > > If I may interject, I hope setup never does this automatically, not > even the first time it runs. Can an arbitrary sort order be > acceptable by default, unless the user wants to sort by ping > performance? I agree. Max.
Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 12:00:27AM -0600, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote: >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. I haven't been paying close attention here but are we talking about *always* doing this when the mirror list is displayed? If so, I don't think it's a good idea. Or, maybe it's only done when there has been no default selected. IMO, the best solution would be adding a "sort by best bandwidth" button or something similar to the mirror display. Then, setup can query all of the mirrors and put the "closest" one at top. It could save that order in some file locally, too. cgf
RE: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
[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. > >> > > > > NOO!! 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.
Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
Gary R. Van Sickle wrote: >> On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Lapo Luchini wrote: >> >>> I guess the best would be to sort by "ping time" (smalest to >>> bigger) to help reduce unnecessary trans-oceanic downloads. >>> But of course it would need to check them each time... or may it be >>> cached in the local setup.ini? >> >> 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. >> I was thinking treeview Continent/Country/Site. >> > > NOO!! 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? Max.
RE: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Lapo Luchini wrote: > > LL> I guess the best would be to sort by "ping time" (smalest to bigger) to > LL> help reduce unnecessary trans-oceanic downloads. > LL> But of course it would need to check them each time... or may it be > LL> cached in the local setup.ini? > > 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 was thinking treeview Continent/Country/Site. > NOO!! 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. -- Gary R. Van Sickle Brewer. Patriot.
Re: "Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 10:46:10PM +1100, Robert Collins wrote: >On Mon, 2003-01-20 at 19:59, Lapo Luchini wrote: >> Robert Collins wrote: >> >> >But: even after that is done, I think we should reexamine the sorting >> >concept, and perhaps sort by the sources.redhat.com order (for us->site >> >speed), or perhaps user mirrors then official, etc. >> > >> > >> I guess the best would be to sort by "ping time" (smalest to bigger) to >> help reduce unnecessary trans-oceanic downloads. > >Which means pinging all the sites, and storing the results. We use the >official mirror list today, so we can't do this *today*. Also there are >other, more policy issues - time to ping all the sites, policy of the >sites (do they allow ping?). The check-mirrors script is available via cvs. If you check out the htdocs, you'll get it. You can also view it via http://cygwin.com/check-mirrors . This script checks the master mirror list: http://cygwin.com/mirrors.txt for mirror availability and updates mirrors.lst and mirrors.html accordingly. If someone wants to modify this script to add "time it took to check" to a file somewhere, I wouldn't object. Of course, the time it took to check a mirror from a system located in Raleigh, NC, USA is going to differ from the time anywhere else in the world, maybe substantially. cgf
"Mirrors list order is snafued" - What is the order supposed to be?
setup/README asserts that "Mirrors list orer is snafued". What particular order is it supposed to have? Max. PS: Igor: I'd seed the misspelling, but didn't bother to change it, since I knew I was about to ask this question, and add the answer to README.
