article.sgml - Formalize Requirements?

[Ken Smith]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 06:15:07PM +0300, Valentin Nechayev wrote:
>  Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 21:03:01, kensmith wrote about "Re: article.sgml - Formalize Requirements?": 
> 
> > Requirements of Tier-1 Mirror Sites
> > -----------------------------------
> 
> > 4) IF this site allows sync's from Tier-2 sites then:
> 
> If this site doesn't allow sync from tier-2 sites, what is its purpose?
> (Below it is said that tier-2 site may sync from ftp-master, may from other.)
> Well, what "tier-1" and "tier-2" means here?
> For now I see that if you have formalizations for these terms, they are
> non-obvious.

The distinction would be how long after bits get posted to ftp-master they
can be expected to be on this machine.  A Tier-1 site would wind up having
them before a Tier-2 site for the most part.  Exactly how long it takes
the bits to appear on a site after they get posted to ftp-master is of
interest to re@ during the beta cycles because they'd like their beta
testers to have as much time as possible to test/debug.  My thought was
that they could list the Tier-1 sites in their announcements to the
beta testers, saying that this set of machines is where the bits are
most likely to appear first.  I didn't want to *require* that a Tier-1
site be willing to have Tier-2 sites feeding from it because this would
require some extra administrative overhead.  This also is why it would
be good if Tier-1 sites carry "everything", so that the beta testers
are reasonably sure the site would have whatever they're testing.

> > 2) Site admin on hubs@ as well as mirror-announce at .
> > 3) Carry everything.
> 
> What is reason for carrying everything?
> E.g. I don't know any real need for architectures other than i386
> in our region (Ukraine).

Answered above I think, let us know if it's not clear.  I do think we
need to come up with a reasonable definition of "everything", that is
kind of an open issue.  IMO we should only have re@ make a distinction
between Tier-1's and Tier-2's as part of the *beta* announcements and
they should not make any such distinction for the release announcements.

> > Requirements of Tier-2 Mirror Sites
> > -----------------------------------
> 
> > 1) Sync from an ftp-master* site or a Tier-1 site, preferrably a
> >    Tier-1.
> 
> Well, ftp-master* are other than Tier-1? What's the difference
> between Tier-1 mirror and regional ftp-master?

Yes, ftp-master* would probably be considered Tier-0, and I think we
should consider the regional ftp-masters as Tier-0 (where ftp-masters
only allow connects from Official Mirror Sites and nothing else, if
they allow connects from other sites then they're a Tier-1).

-- 
						Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |