Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:04:27 +0200
From: Mark Bergsma <mark(a)nedworks.org>
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Geographic DNS for wikipedia
To: wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <4106DF7B.6030404(a)nedworks.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Hi all,
Following up on the geographic DNS discussion on this list, triggered by
the upcoming Squid servers in France, I proposed a solution to the
developers/sysadmins on #mediawiki.
About six months ago, I implemented such a system for our IRC network
Blitzed[1]. We have several servers distributed over the globe, and we
thought it would be nice to send our users to a physically close server.
That's not unlike the situation with wikipedia visitors and the squids
in the US and France.
I remember reading about a similar system of the website of the FIFA 2002 in
Korea/Japan. The problem there was that a system like this doesn't take
advantage of the time difference in different areas of the world and
therefore during the day in Asia the servers there were packed while the
ones in Europe were idling around because everybdy was asleep there.
I don't know how it works for you but I see this as a potential problem.
Tobias Hesse