Multicast APT
Mentor: ?JanMarekGlogowski
Summary: Implementing a multicast package download method for APT
Required skills:
- C++
Description: In the case of multiple identical Debian clients installed or updated from a central server/repository (e.g. using FAI), the same package data is sent multiple times over the network once for each client. As the package download takes roughly half of the install time every additional client adds at least 50% install time. To solve this problem, image-based installations programs often use UDP multicast (e.g. see udpcast) to send the data to multiple host in parallel. One idea was implementing an APT-TFTP backend as TFTP has a multicast protocol extension and multiple multicast TFTP Open Source clients are available.
Applications:
Please contact mbanck@debian.org or jmglogow@googlemail.com in case of any question.