If you use Arch Linux I’d strongly suggest using the snippet of code below to use rankmirrors to sort your pacman repository mirrors into an optimal order, to use the fastest servers first.
cd /etc/pacman.d
for repo in *; do
echo "Processing $repo..."
mv $repo $repo.b4.rankmirrors
rankmirrors -v $repo.b4.rankmirrors > $repo
done
I was getting an average of about 300-400K/sec; after doing this, I was reaching 10M/sec!
If you have your own server, why not consider joining the pool.ntp.org project to help provide accurate time to many client machines?
NTP, or Network Time Protocol, is a method for computers to obtain the current time accurately in order to keep their clocks correct. Even when set accurately, the clock on most computers will eventually drift until it is no longer accurate – often made worse when the computer is being heavily loaded.
NTP allows a client to ask a time server to tell it the current time. The “main” timeservers have accurate timekeeping equipment connected (GPS receivers are common) to give them the correct time. Other timeservers simply keep in sync with several main servers, and accept requests from client machines.
The pool.ntp.org project is a big virtual cluster of timeservers striving to provide reliable easy to use NTP service for millions of clients without putting a strain on the big popular timeservers.
Been meaning to do this for a while, but I’ve finally set up a new public NTP timeserver.
It’s a stratum-3 server, syncing to several decent stratum-2 servers, and answers to the name of time.preshweb.co.uk.
It’s entered the UK pool.ntp.org DNS pool, and I’m seeing quite a few requests already – currently my stats show 4.2 requests per second.
NTP is a damn useful tool to keep system clocks in sync and I’ve been using it for ages on all my boxen; it’s nice to be able to help out by sharing the load a little.
Read more info about NTP or about the pool.ntp.org project. If you have a server somewhere and are willing to help out, the project needs more pool servers to share the load – read more about joining.