Ubuntu started using international bandwidth?

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Something strange happened recently, I haven't changed any of my repository settings but all my updates and installs are using international bandwidth. I am running a split with two pppoe connections and all the other local sites work fine (like MyBB). Anybody else noticed this?

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Ok, problem solved. Looks like the default South Africa server now doesn't use local bandwidth anymore. Had to change it in software sources.

Anybody else that also uses a split, just make sure your is using the correct server as well.

 

[s0lar]

A post from Andrew Alston:


Hi All,

It has come to my attention after the last Ubuntu release that a fair
number of people are using international DNS servers as their resolvers,
and as a result were getting redirected to the London instance of
mirror.ac.za and using their international bandwidth for local
downloads.

With this in mind, I figured it would be a good idea to put some reasons
down why it's a REALLY bad idea to use international resolvers from .za.

These are a few of them:

a.) Anything that has an anycast instance inside .za and internationally
will go local when resolved off a South African DNS server and
international when its not (mirror.ac.za style)
b.) I.S/SAIX/Others run national Akamai Servers, that serve a TON of
content for various websites, use an international DNS server and you
are going to go to the much slower (and more expensive in terms of
bandwidth) instances
c.) Various other content companies do geographic redirection to their
content to redirect you to the closest (and hopefully least latent
node), using a DNS server internationally completely destroys this

If you are using international DNS servers, if you haven't found it
already, you will soon find that it has a significant performance impact
on a lot of content, and you WILL end up using more international
bandwidth when you don't hit local nodes for various content that is
hosted in South Africa.

If you are using mirror.ac.za and any of it resolves to a 196.32
address, you are using an international dns server, if you are using a
national DNS server it will resolve to a 155.232. address.

Thanks

Andrew Alston
TENET - Chief Technology Officer

 

[ambo]

With this in mind, I figured it would be a good idea to put some reasons down why it's a REALLY bad idea to use international resolvers from .za.

So many people don't believe me when I say international resolvers are a bad thing. If you really don't want to use your ISP's DNS resolver then run a resolver on your local machine