/stand/sysinstall: Why do we always have to download /INDEX for any installation changes?

[Constantine]

Hello, all!

Why do we always have to download .../packages/INDEX file, when we want 
to browse the package list from /stand/sysinstall?
The size of the file is 3 megabytes, and it takes about a minute to 
download on my 512K DSL line (I bet it takes forever for those, who have 
dial-up :-) ).
Why not keep a local-copy of this file and compare md5sum for the one on 
the ftp-server? AFAIK, we do not change the INDEX file within one 
release, so we do not even need to compare md5sum!
Or keeping a gzipped version of that file would speed up the download in 
about 10 times, which is something one might consider...

Cheers,
Constantine.