Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Andres Aeschlimann]

Hello all,

Let me give you some more information about the decision of SWITCH to close 
down the well known SWITCHmirror service.
 
In about 1990, the newly born Internet was such a success, that soon after, 
lines were completely overloaded, and it became literally impossible to 
download 
anything from sites across the Atlantic, at least during local office hours or 
in the evening.
This also became a major problem for administrators at local Universities 
who had to install or patch their servers, as their installation routines took 
ages to complete, or even ran into timeouts.
This being a common problem of the Universities, it soon became clear that 
instead of solving it at each University individually, it made much more sense
to let SWITCH do that once and for all of them.
So SWITCHmirror was born.
 
And it was used. Heavily. Such that the SWITCHmirror infrastructure became 
among the most performant - and the most expensive - for about two decades.
It was so performant that it could even be used to test network speed.
Network engineers out there on the edge of the SWITCH network knew the
sustained throughput of the SWITCHmirror by heart, and so they could just
measure the download rate of some large file in order to tell whether their 
local line actually had the speed it was planned for.

The congestion across the Atlantic didn’t actually last for too long.
Soon after, new lines with double throughput and more were put in place.
However, this didn’t come at no cost, and so, SWITCH also had to charge 
separately for overseas volumes, which again made the SWITCHmirror 
attractive as it generated only local traffic. Later on, this separate charge 
could again be dropped, and so the SWITCHmirror lost, in principle, its 
raison d’être. However, in the meantime, the SWITCHmirror was well known, 
not only at the Universities but even more in Switzerland and in Europe, as the 
download statistics are showing today: About half of the monthly 150-200TB 
are going to foreign countries, the other half to destinations within 
Switzerland, 
and only 2-5% to the Swiss Universities.
 
SWITCH is committed to operate solutions that empower users primarily in the 
academic world. Given the above statistics, and seeing that the hardware was 
reaching 
its eol, SWITCH has done a survey among the responsible people at the 
Universities,
which clearly showed that as of today, having such a mirror clearly isn’t a 
requirement
for them any more. SWITCH has therefore decided to decommission this service,
in favour of many others that are about to be put in place.
The schedule for this decommissioning is documented on http://mirror.switch.ch/ 
.

So, we are hoping that you can follow our reasons for turning off SWITCHmirror 
and thank you for your understanding.
 
Andres Aeschlimann
-- 
SWITCH 
Andres Aeschlimann, service responsible for SWITCHmirror
Werdstrasse 2, P.O. Box, 8021 Zurich, Switzerland 
phone +41 44 268 15 15, direct +41 44 268 15 75 
andres.aeschlim...@switch.ch , 
http://www.switch.ch  
 
Working for a better digital world




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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Claudio Luck]

Hi

On 23.08.18 10:37, Manuel Wenger wrote:
> Thank you Fredy for pointing this out. It's really a pity SWITCHmirror is 
> shutting down.
> 
> We are also interested in understanding what would be involved in keeping 
> such a mirror alive, especially from a storage and bandwidth perspective.
> 
> Could someone from Switch please comment? It'd be highly appreciated.
> 

>From a bandwith/topology perspective please note http://debian.ethz.ch/,
which is hosted on the SWITCH network too.


Cheers
Claudio


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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Manuel Wenger]

Thank you Fredy for pointing this out. It's really a pity SWITCHmirror is 
shutting down.

We are also interested in understanding what would be involved in keeping such 
a mirror alive, especially from a storage and bandwidth perspective.

Could someone from Switch please comment? It'd be highly appreciated.

Thanks & regards

Manuel Wenger
Netstream AG


On 22.08.18, 15:54, "swinog-boun...@lists.swinog.ch on behalf of Fredy 
Kuenzler"  
wrote:

SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/

I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.

However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.

Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
management?

Please discuss.

-- 
Fredy Kuenzler
Init7




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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Viktor Steinmann]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Fredy. Most of us would have 
missed it probably.


It's a pity, they're shutting down this service. This has been an 
institution. Reliable and trusted.


Unfortunately, there is no real explanation, why they're discontinuing 
the service. Care to comment, SWITCH, please?


Kind regards,

Viktor


On 22.08.2018 15:40, Fredy Kuenzler wrote:

SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/

I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.

However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.

Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
management?

Please discuss.



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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Patrick Studer]

That’s really sad. Unfortunately, they don’t mentioned exactly, why they are 
going to shutdown service. Or is the outdated Sun Hardware the reason for the 
shutdown.

As longterm user of the SwitchMirror, I would be glad to contribute in some 
ways, to help this (or something similar) service stays there.

If Community supported, it would be nice to have some figures (bandwidth, disk 
space, etc. etc.).

Just let me know, when my help is needed.

Kind Regards

Patrick Studer
X-NetConsulting

> Am 22.08.2018 um 15:40 schrieb Fredy Kuenzler :
> 
> SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
> announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/
> 
> I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
> would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.
> 
> However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
> mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.
> 
> Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
> Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
> management?
> 
> Please discuss.
> 
> -- 
> Fredy Kuenzler
> Init7
> 
> 
> ___
> swinog mailing list
> swinog@lists.swinog.ch
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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Nico Schottelius]

Wow, I am surprised! Thanks for pointing out, Fredy.

We are currently running a Devuan & OpenNebula mirror on
https://mirror.datacenterlight.ch/ and are already planning to add
support for Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS in the near future, as we want
to have

As we operate this mirror anyway, we would be open to mirror other
sources, too and take care of maintenance as well as disk space.

We would only have to talk to our provider about the bandwidth, which
happens to be Init7.

Best,

Nico


Fredy Kuenzler  writes:

> SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
> announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/
>
> I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
> would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.
>
> However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
> mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.
>
> Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
> Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
> management?
>
> Please discuss.


--
Your Swiss, Open Source and IPv6 Virtual Machine. Now on www.datacenterlight.ch.


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Re: [swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[rainer]

Am 2018-08-22 15:40, schrieb Fredy Kuenzler:

SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/

I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.

However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.

Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
management?




Are there any stats as to what bandwidth it needed?

I seem to remember that when they stopped mirroring the FreeBSD FTP 
server it was because mirroring the server took more bandwidth than the 
downloads of the mirrored content.


There's contact information here:

https://www.switch.ch/services/mirror/




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[swinog] mirror.switch.ch to be closed down

[Fredy Kuenzler]

SWITCH announced that they plan to close down mirror.switch.ch. See
announcement http://mirror.switch.ch/

I personally think this is very sad. In the name of the community I
would like to thank SWITCH for their support over all these years.

However I would like to start the discussion how we can keep
mirror.switch.ch alive as a community effort.

Can the decision makers at SWITCH please explain the preconditions?
Funding for new hardware? Throw in some bandwidth? Colocation? Server
management?

Please discuss.

-- 
Fredy Kuenzler
Init7



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