[MacPorts] #51346: nou.nc: "default" host for New Zealand: ping succeeds, HTTP times out

[MacPorts]

#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 at 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 at 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 at 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