When getting a tcp packet from USA than a local ISP is faster...

Today i decided to update our desktop linux machines to the latest and greatest Ubuntu version (8.10).
I was using it for sometime on my laptop and decided it would not break anything so it was time for an upgrade.
Since Digital-OPSiS office is in Athens, Greece,we use gr.archieve.ubuntu.com as a repo to pull updates etc.
I noticed that the download speed was not that great so i switched one of the machines to use the use the US mirror instead... and it took about 40% less time to download the same packages...
Doing a simple ping to the gr and us mirrors cleared things a bit more.

stelios@DIAS-Linux:~$ ping gr.archive.ubuntu.com
PING patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=197 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=199 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=201 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=197 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=5 ttl=58 time=194 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=6 ttl=58 time=202 ms
64 bytes from patroklos.noc.ntua.gr (147.102.222.211): icmp_seq=7 ttl=58 time=204 ms

--- patroklos.noc.ntua.gr ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 5998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 194.562/199.653/204.150/3.273 ms

stelios@DIAS-Linux:~$ ping us.archive.ubuntu.com
PING us.archive.ubuntu.com (91.189.88.31) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=90.2 ms
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=89.9 ms
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=90.3 ms
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=89.5 ms
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=5 ttl=54 time=89.1 ms
64 bytes from leningradskaya.canonical.com (91.189.88.31): icmp_seq=6 ttl=54 time=88.6 ms

--- us.archive.ubuntu.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 88.453/89.106/90.142/0.816 ms

It looks like it takes 2.5 times more time to reach the local Athens uni, where the mirror is than the US mirror.
I was aware that there are capacity issues at the AIX the Greek providers are using for interconnecting but this is really ridiculous...

Let's start blogging

Up till now i had resisted the idea of starting a blog.
The main reason i had as my excuse, was time or to better put it, the lack of it. Trying to run a small business and a family with a new born is enough to make you wish for more hours in a day.
But the real reason was that i though of blogging as just "hype" that will run its course and sooner or later disappear.

Then i attended the OpenCoffee XV meeting in Athens and heard Jason Calacanis presentation.
At one point he mentioned something like "the more you give to the community the more you will get back" and that really got me thinking.
My company, Digital-OPSiS, is developing embedded Open Source solutions for sometime now, so you can say that we own our existence to the mentality of giving to the community.
If the people who started the Open Source movement haven't done so, probably many of the wonderful things that we now take for granted in the IT/Internet would not exist.
I call it the "avalanche effect" and seen it many times with open source projects.
Someone writes a few lines of code, posts the code online,and boom, developers from all over the world start contributing and before you know it you have a killer app in your hands (Asterisk anyone :)

So the same could be true about ideas or thoughts
If Jason had not said that phrase, probably i wouldn't have started this blog,so just think how many people could start something new,solve a problem or just feel better by things you and i take for granted or just don't mention.
That alone i think is a pretty good reason to start blogging