Comment 7 for bug 361650

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 09:10:30PM -0000, Carlos Carvalho wrote:
> Automatic disabling of official country mirrors is dangerous because
> the prober may *erroneously* think that a mirror is unavailable.
>
> One example of misjudment happens when the international link between
> the prober in Europe and the mirror fails. However the mirror may
> still be accessible to national users. Since the majority of the
> mirror users is usually from the same country, the mirror will be
> performing its function pretty well even if it's inaccessible from the
> prober in Europe. If you cut the country mirror out and send users to
> another one, you'll just harm the users by telling them to go to a
> usually slower site. Particularly if you point them to the main
> machines in London.

+1. Although you might wonder how well a .ubuntu.com hostname will work
if the mirror has broken international connectivity. But than again,
it's not very probable that the whole country lost international
connectivity..

I'd say, give a good warning to mirror-admins that a country mirror
*seems* down, and let the takedown be done manually. (Save you the
communication with dns zones as well)

--
Mark Schouten <email address hidden>