#51346: nou.nc: "default" host for New Zealand: ping succeeds, HTTP times out ----------------------------+--------------------- Reporter: macports@… | Owner: admin@… Type: defect | Status: new Priority: Normal | Milestone: Component: server/hosting | Version: 2.3.4 Keywords: | Port: ----------------------------+--------------------- I'm based in New Zealand (.nz). At present it appears this is leading to `nou.nc` being the automatically selected [wiki:Mirrors mirror]. However at least today `nou.nc` is pingable, but HTTP connections (at least from New Zealand) seem to just time out. (Which in turn is made worse by my ISP having a transparent HTTP proxy that fakes the connect and then hangs for a long time before it times out; but even testing via another ISP ping still succeeds and HTTP still fails to connect and/or return a result in a sensible amount of time.) It's not clear to me how `nou.nc` is being chosen for New Zealand. While both New Caledonia and New Zealand are Pacific Islands they're a long distance apart, and the connections from New Caledonia to anywhere aren't amazing. It's also not clear to me if nou.nc is even intended to be used from outside New Caledonia. If it isn't, perhaps it shouldn't be in the public list of mirrors? Normally I'd expect Australia (eg, aarnet.au) is a much better default choice for New Zealand (it is physically and Internet-topology closer than New Caledonia). But oddly there seems to be a 160ms RTT jump on the NZ to aarnet.au path at present, via my normal ISP (but not via another test ISP). Eg, via my main ISP: {{{ ewen@ashram:~$ ping -c 3 aarnet.au.packages.macports.org PING mirror.aarnet.edu.au (202.158.214.106): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 202.158.214.106: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=181.136 ms 64 bytes from 202.158.214.106: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=180.148 ms 64 bytes from 202.158.214.106: icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=179.894 ms --- mirror.aarnet.edu.au ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 179.894/180.393/181.136/0.536 ms }}} And via another ISP in the same city (Wellington, NZ): {{{ ewen@noc:~$ ping -c 3 aarnet.au.packages.macports.org PING mirror.aarnet.edu.au (202.158.214.106) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from mirror.aarnet.edu.au (202.158.214.106): icmp_req=1 ttl=50 time=47.4 ms 64 bytes from mirror.aarnet.edu.au (202.158.214.106): icmp_req=2 ttl=50 time=47.0 ms 64 bytes from mirror.aarnet.edu.au (202.158.214.106): icmp_req=3 ttl=50 time=47.1 ms --- mirror.aarnet.edu.au ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 47.022/47.226/47.496/0.320 ms }}} So possibly that's why nou.nc is being selected by the ping test -- it's more than 47ms away, but less than 180ms away: {{{ ewen@ashram:~$ ping -c 3 nou.nc.packages.macports.org PING pub.lagoon.nc (202.22.158.243): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 202.22.158.243: icmp_seq=0 ttl=48 time=70.361 ms 64 bytes from 202.22.158.243: icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=67.023 ms 64 bytes from 202.22.158.243: icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=68.514 ms --- pub.lagoon.nc ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 67.023/68.633/70.361/1.365 ms }}} via both ISPs. Possibly some/all of the issue with `nou.nc` is that it's seeing a surprising amount of load due to `aarnet.au` having a non-trivial RTT latency to several paths, and thus not being selected for requests. For now I'm attempting to work around this with [[https://guide.macports.org/chunked/internals.configuration- files.html|host_blacklist]] in `macports.conf`. But it might be worth someone asking `nou.nc` if (a) they are actually allowing outside-country HTTP transfers and (b) if they want to be doing so, and (c) if they can actually cope with the load that gets diverted there when another mirror is "misbehaving". Ewen -- Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/51346> MacPorts <https://www.macports.org/> Ports system for OS X