ArmA Patch mirrors

[jerryhopper 286]

Dear fellow community members,

I have signed up for the patch hosting at the 'Morphicon' thread, and have been offering the public the beta patches, and today, the 1.08 patch.

Tonight i got a traffic report from my servers, and was ASTOUNDED by what i saw there..... i moved 7 terabyte today on my german server!!!

quickly checking my other server, which has a traffic limit - that made a total of 280 GB today.....

My question to other 'patch Hosters' :

'How much traffic did you do on day one of patch 1.08?'

here is the result of hosti ng the patch on my 2 servers:

Quote[/b] ]

ArmA.Valuenet.nl 250 GB on 11/6/2007

ww.armedassault.eu 6.9 TB on 11/6/2007

show me your numbers!

[Apo-TTCC 0]

The DL counter on the German armed-assault.de page is at 7358 total at the moment....

http://armed-assault.de/downloads/patches/

7358 x 570MB = 4194060MB

[Snake Man 407]

In light of those numbers its always good to recap some...

ArmA_Internationalupdate105_108.zip - 564mb

ArmA_Internationalupdate105_108.rar - 505mb

[jerryhopper 286]

In light of those numbers its always good to recap some...

ArmA_Internationalupdate105_108.zip - 564mb

ArmA_Internationalupdate105_108.rar - 505mb

i actually mean the total amount of traffic, generated by the downloads of the patch files from your server

[shinRaiden 0]

Not bad, we tried to self-host a 500mb video and it tanked the server hard, the problem was that the time to download was long enough that the connection count started grinding the cpu to a halt. Even if the file is cached in memory, whether locally or at an intermediate caching server level, the connections weren't getting cleared fast enough.

That's when you start grabbing your logs hourly, grepping them, and slapping them with lovely .htaccess filters to throttle back the insanity. There never was a problem with bandwidth out of the server, rather the problem was that the downloaders couldn't download fast enough to get off the server before someone else would grab the file as well.

[granQ 293]

... :: TORRENTS TORRENTS TORRENTS :: ...

When will this community learn? I had problem downloading it so had to wait for a swedish mirror with less trafic so i could download it.

Next patch, please provide a torrent. Saves money, more reliable, easier for many to use with large files (can auto resume) and the speed always goes faster the more that connects, not the other way around.

[-SoF-Max 0]

... :: TORRENTS TORRENTS TORRENTS :: ...

When will this community learn? I had problem downloading it so had to wait for a swedish mirror with less trafic so i could download it.

Next patch, please provide a torrent. Saves money, more reliable, easier for many to use with large files (can auto resume) and the speed always goes faster the more that connects, not the other way around.

You do know that we could as a community provide a torrent? Or any of the mirrors could create a torrent file in like 2 seconds and put it out there.

[shinRaiden 0]

I took a look at torrents, even sketched out an operational plan and talked it over with others in the community. Nothing ever came of it, and you want to know why?

1) Nobody's building the whole community.

These forums have devolved into a mere message board for people to announce what they're doing off in their own little bubble, or to whine and beg on a public bully pulpit. Even the BAS mission framework has been treated as "here, look at our toy, if you can be bothered", and the rest is far worse. Who's to blame? Should anyone be blamed? I don't think it's possible, it's so systemic.

A prime example of that is the suffocating horde of 'news' sites regurgitating the same news. How much of BIS's PR time was spent regurgitating the same 'news' to an inordinate amount of "me-too" sites, instead of working with publishers to get timely and adequate promotion? We'll never know.

2) Everyone wants to be king.

The issue isn't the 'fan sites' existence. Rather, the issue is everyone trying to cut out their own turf, to make themselves the king of other people's work. How many so-called mod teams have we seen announced here, that consisted merely of a flash site and a manager, and soliciting everything else?

3) Chaos is business as usual.

When the usual route to finding 'cool new content' consists of random people reporting in multiple threads youtube videos linked to incompatible versions of a project not previously announced here, the result is mass confusion. "No idea who's making it, what version it is, or if it actually works at all, but the video looks awesome, so it must be awesome."

It should be the place of the mod maker to make the appropiate announcement and discussions, in a venue that the entire community can benefit from. The mod maker also ought to have a method of synchronizing content with mirror sites, and properly patching the client-side content. When the mod maker is the LAST one in the community to be discussing the content they made with the community, then we have a problem.

4) Which version is correct? Run them all!

Inevitably there will be updates to content, unless the content design is so hopelessly clobbered as to make any hope of sanely patching eternally futile. I could name names, but that's not the point of this here discussion. So how would that work? Would you have a hundred different downloads of tiny incremental versions? Has there been any mention made of how many GB any one of the servers (ofp.gamezone.cz for example) has, not counting incremental patches to baseline hosted content?

It's not just a matter of storage either. The community can't be expected to both sifting through a massive list of just the M4's that have churned out for OFP. Some of you may recall the old JohnnyLump addon list. Some poor soul tried to catalog every addon ever made, with a source and mirror link where ever possible. That futile gesture was ultimately abandoned, because there was no communication on incoming data, and because the list was too massive for any one to bother using to populate downloads with.

5) How much effort are you willing to spend admin'ing?

An open tracker obviously won't work, because it will be spammed to death with duplicate entries because everyone wants to be seen as the 'Dear Leader'. Secondly, it will be hijacked so instead of being mainly for addons, you'll end up with yet another pr0n/anime tracker. Some of you might not complain, but that's essentially killing the original purpose, and there are better places for taking the "edge of your Nagin's".

This means that it would be a 'closed' tracker to be usable and beneficial. With a closed tracker, only admins would be able to add entries to the tracker. That would keep the spam down, and make it usable to the community. To keep client load low and availability high, tracker entries would be culled 14 days after posting and replaced with links to HTTP mirrors. This means then that the addon makers have to go talk to the tracker managers to get their stuff on the tracker. And the likelihood of that happening is ... ?

Now suppose that the mod has some pretty pictures, but content-wise is terminally stuffed. The mod will never be practical without a total rewrite from the ground up. Based on this, or perhaps because the tracker admin views the amount of original BIS copyrighted content in the addon as being barely a blink away from outright warez hosting, suppose the admin declines to add it to the tracker.

Based off past observation, the likely response will be "screw you, I'm going to do what I want to regardless, and I'll just keep shopping mirrors". With that, the tracker then becomes yet another useless project and waste of time and effort.

6) Still not convinced?

Next time you pull up a torrent, do two things.

First, take a look at what your upload rate is, compared to your download. Back in the day, with dialup and low-end DSL or cable, the numbers were fairly comparable. You gave roughly what you got. Now look at whatever bandwidth numbers you've gotten used to. Note the much wider ratio. Ask yourself "How has the increase in download bandwidth led to a decrease in patience, or planning?"

Second, look at the client log and see who you're pulling from. How much % of their upload bandwidth is tied up to send you data? How is their inability to meet the world's demands for data reflected in your patience? My DSL ratio is approximately 5:1. That means, at least 5 other people with comparable internet service have to dedicate their entire upload bandwidth just to satisfy my demand to peg my download bandwidth. Some Cable modems approach 10:1 ratios. With cable modem's, not only are you demanding 5~10 people's exclusive traffic worth of bandwidth, you're also demanding it from their neighbors due to the shared structure of the Cable Internet infrastructure. Which is more important, their ability to use their access to the Internet, or your urge to consume as much and as fast as possible? Since when is anyone obliged to 'fill your needs?'

I downloaded Tonal on dialup, http does support resumes if the server and site are configured properly. There's lessons to be learned, if you're willing to learn them.

7) Practical options

I'm not saying don't make a tracker. I'm saying, do your homework, look at what's practical, see how it can realisticly benefit the whole community, and be sensible about it. Don't go putting up a spam site just to mark out your own turf. If you design and implement it right, you still can only hope that everyone else will get a clue and use what you are offering in a suitable manner.

[granQ 293]

i am saying, just put a torrent up for patches and other stuff that gets tones of downloads. Just provide a link. Easy peasy.

And one patch has been released as a torrent before (for germans)..

Not saying every single addon and such would be up on a tracker.

so yes,[soF]Max I know it can be done in 2 sec, but doesn't matter much when nobody does it.

shinRaiden, read my previous post again (i dont say all addons and community sites, just that bis make a torrent and provide), so lets go over it again.

1) Nobody's building the whole community.

Say what does this have to do with providing a torrent instead of just http/ftp mirrors?

2) Everyone wants to be king.

OK, so many sites with guys that wants to be cool, and we can't have a torrent for that?

3) Chaos is business as usual.

We can't have a torrent because some coders/modmakers are the last one to start discuss their addons in a thread?

Personaly,since I am a addon maker I just want to say that.. who cares if the addon maker is the last one to write in a thread.

4) Which version is correct? Run them all!

readme.txt + version number.. solves it.

5) How much effort are you willing to spend admin'ing?

guys are running radioshows, addon makers are putting in hours, admins are already doing a great job at lets say OFPEC.

I don't think this will be an issue at all, if someone made a tracker.

6) Still not convinced?

Next time YOU start up a torrent, go into your config and change your upload speed to whatever you like. Normaly i have 50% of my upload speed, then no problem using internet at the same time, listing on radio or whatever and it takes longer for me to reach 1:1 ratio, that means i upload for a longer time.

[shinRaiden 0]

If you'd bothered to carefully read my post, you would notice that the points are all inter-related.

In order for the tracker to work, it's going to have to be a managed tracker with controls to reject duplicate or nonsense submissions. Also, to be most effective, addon makers should be the ones submitting their addons to the tracker admins for review, not the admins having to wander through all the different isolated communities trying to scavenge addons and guessing what's the latest version.

And if you bothered to read the readme's, which nobody does (remember iirc Nephilim's test where the password for the addon rar was at the bottom of the readme, and there was a bazillion complaints/posts about "what's the password?") you'd find out all sorts of chaos with the addons. One particular popular mod is hardcoded to specific ArmA builds through extremely poor content design. So since 'substantial' portions of the community for reasons of running unstable prototype systems choose to run various deprecated versions of ArmA, for that addon to be effective at least three different versions would need to be torrented, with non-trivial storage and bandwidth requirements of all nodes.

Throughout your entire response, it was nothing but "meh, I want a torrent, I want it now, I want, I want..." Then you back that up by suggesting throttling your upload speed. Most of the popular torrent clients throw up a warning message at that time stating that if you reduce your upload bandwidth, that reduces the 'sharing' ability of the torrent by taking, but not giving.

The bulk of my post was to illustrate the researched issues that need to be resolved so that a community tracker can be a beneficial tool for content beyond just BIS patches. Ultimately however, if the true underlying motivator is merely simple impatient greed (see your comment about throttling upload bandwidth to reduce availability to others while maintaining max bandwidth for yourself) well that will effectively break the usefulness of a torrent tracker.

[eisa01 0]

If you'd bothered to carefully read my post, you would notice that the points are all inter-related.

In order for the tracker to work, it's going to have to be a managed tracker with controls to reject duplicate or nonsense submissions. Also, to be most effective, addon makers should be the ones submitting their addons to the tracker admins for review, not the admins having to wander through all the different isolated communities trying to scavenge addons and guessing what's the latest version.

What's the problem with using on of the thousands of open trackers already running on the web? There's not much point having every addon on a tracker, as it's much work and it doesn't require as much bandwidth as the official patches. All that's needed is for someone to make the .torrent file in their favorite torrent program, using whatever tracker they want to, and post the link here in the forum. If you are worried that the tracker also tracks illegal content, just host the .torrent file on some free webspace.

Then if enough people jump on to seed, and everyone shares, it will come down in less time than it would from a server. Or even better, those that normally host http mirrors choose to seed the torrent on their servers instead. That's my experience at least.

When the first rush is over, just change to regular http mirrors again.

edit: Here's two legal trackers that could be used:

http://www.gameupdates.org/

http://game-files.net/

[shinRaiden 0]

Looking back over several years worth of community history, there's quite a substantial number of addons that are several hundred megabytes in size. Tonal, all the BAS helo's, FFUR, EECP, FDF, WGL, and likely many more. The latest ArmA patch as well is noted at being over 500mb. So it's not just pushing out the patches, there's plenty of other community content that would theoretically benefit from being torrented.

When there's an update to the previously mentioned content, which files should be on the torrent? The original, the patch, the patched new main installer? Some addon makers patch the main installer, others only post the patch with the unpatched main installer.

If the torrents are handled as links casually dropped in the announcement/discussion threads, the likelihood of it being really effective is not nearly as high as if there was a concerted effort to make a community tracker. Additionally, Torrent A does not link with Torrent B. Suppose several different users post 'competing' torrents of the same file. It is of course impossible to prevent, but would be counter productive. That's why a well managed and supported tracker would be beneficial, to encourage cooperation.

In regards to mirrors though, remember that bandwidth and hosting isn't free. Most sites rightfully frown on direct hotlinking, as that eliminates the 'hooks' that attract 'customers' and create affiliated loyalty and revenue.

You mentioned two big "if's": one is if enough people seed, and two is if the seeder's are willing to share bandwidth. I'll admit, I throttle my upload bandwidth like many other people, and the motivation is clear. My priority is to grab the data I want, and I'm under no obligation to help anyone else's impatience. I suspect I'm also not the only one who does that, and that behavior undermines the effective and intended purpose of torrents.

[Big Ofp Fan 0]

All arma players are looking for the patch the last day's

My counter tell me after few days

10237 DL's of the patch, it makes a traffic of 2,647.273 TB

[maddogx 13]

Seems that there are more ArmA players than everyone thinks.

[Big Ofp Fan 0]

Seems that there are more ArmA players than everyone thinks.

seems so.

I think the most players are the old core of ofp players and much new one. Many are working on their projects.... but this is an other threat

[jerryhopper 286]

Seems that there are more ArmA players than everyone thinks.

seems so.

I think the most players are the old core of ofp players and much new one. Many are working on their projects.... but this is an other threat

more ArmA players it seems?

it just isnt so. just deduct 40% of downloads that are requested by people with an illegal version, and 10% redownloads....

i rather calculate the size of the ArmA players by the daily average total ONLINE players....

the peek amount of players on a weekday is 1100 players

to ShinRaiden....

I want to build the community, only no-1 wants to help me.

Why?? i dunno, i only demand they bow to me and yell Hail Jerry !

seriously,

i think it has something to do with ego.... i get multiple reactions from the community with text like:

- Dont do that, it will stirr up even more shit!

- They dont deserve this attention!

- Are you serious about interviewing that person? he is nuts!

- if you leak any info from this (public IRC chan ) i ban you, and dont support you anymore.

- so Jerry, ur going on ... bashing tour?

And many many more like this....

im not impressed, nor influenced by these opinions.

i think all these things are funny, as i just observe things note them and make a small 'entertaining' subject out of it.

im my view, everybody is equal with the exceptions of agressive commercial companies and their personell.

so i continue to do what i do, as long as i get positive response.

About that tracker... if there would be ANY tracker, id say that tracker should be run by BIS.

Another idea is to post the patch to USENET - no upload share - no problems with traffic on servers, and always max speeds!

To All:

Find the yellow brick road,and follow that guy with that big forehead.... for he, is the savure of our community!

vote Jerry for President!

and oh, to get back on topic of this thread:

i passed the 12TB today.....

[jerryhopper 286]

Currently: 17 066 667 MB

Mirror status : DOWN for now...