Australian Telstra Bigpond mirror

[Ian Fleming]

The Australian "Telstra Bigpond" mirror (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+mirror/mirror.files.bigpond.com-archive) was axed as of 30/06/2010 and no longer exists but remains in the official mirror list.

One possible solution would be to change it to reflect http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/ubuntu/ which is available to everyone and also, most importantly , unmetered for Telstra Bigpond Customers.

[David Coles (dcoles)]

Also subscribing 'tnm' since he's the official owner of the mirror in Launchpad.

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

David....

I posted a note on the ubuntu-mirrors mailing list indicating the issue(s).

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

Can easly be reproduced in software sources by clicking on other in the download drop box, listed under the Australia mirrors is the Telstra Bigpond repo mirror.files.bigpond.com.

http://mirror.files.bigpond.com mirrors only main restricted and universe. Multiverse is not mirrored and no plans to do so.

Downloads from the main restricted and universe components are unmetered for Bigpond customers. How
many users are aware of this I am not sure. How users come about this knowledge I have no idea.

[David Coles (dcoles)]

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/218055,telstra-bigpond-axes-linux-mirror.aspx

Looks like this mirror could have been pulled today along with the rest http://files.bigpond.com. The address is now returning NXDOMAIN.

Really poor form if this is the case. Contained mirrors for CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva and of course Ubuntu. Several of them are still marked as official mirrors.

[David Coles (dcoles)]

I got a response from Telstra today in regards to the status of the mirror.

<snip>
> We understand the removal of the file library will impact you and we are sorry for this but we were unable to continue to focus resources into a service with such niche appeal.
>
> In the meantime however, from today we have unmetered the aarnet mirror (as per your request) that has much wider range of useful files than what the BigPond Files Library did. You can find it at http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/.
>
> Sincerely,
> Martin McNaught
> Director BigPond Operations
> Voice Broadband & Media
> Telstra

It looks very unlikely that this decision will be reversed. On the other hand mirror has been effectively replaced by unmetered access AARNet (the default mirror for Australia). AARNet's mirror is also far more comprehensive than Bigpond Files was and doesn't suffer from the issue of not mirroring Multiverse.

Given this outcome I'd suggest the we now remove files.bigpond.com from the mirror list.

[David Coles (dcoles)]

This is no longer listed as an official mirror or listed in Maverick's mirror list.