[talk] Strength of internet connection has significant impact on OpenBSD 'pkg-add'

[James E Keenan]

On 01/13/2018 06:51 AM, Sujit K M wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 10:19 PM, James E Keenan <jkeenan at pobox.com> wrote:
>> OpenBSD's pkg_add command and certain forms of pkg_info -- e.g., pkg_info -Q
>> -- are sensitive to the quality of one's internet connection to a surprising
>> degree.
>>
>> Background
>>
>> In the last week of December I noticed that my home internet service --
>> Verizon DSL -- was deteriorating severely.  Previously, I might get at most
>> 3% packet loss during 'ping'.  Now I was losing 11% -- and that was to go up
>> to over 20% at times.  I could still download most files, albeit much more
>> slowly.  However, when I tried to download the Vagrant box holding an
>> OpenBSD-6.2 VM prepared by Brian Callahan for the Jan 3 NYCBUG meeting, the
>> estimated time was more than 14 hours.  (Even when I got to LMHQ for the
>> meeting, the download still took between 60 and 90 minutes, so that was a
>> very large file indeed.)
> 
> I would suggest some sort of problem with the OpenBSD and Verizon Network
> in case of the packet loss, since below you had mentioned it is zero in another
> network you had tried. But that said why is a port download taking 14 hours,

It was not a port download that was projected to take 14 hours; it was a 
download of an entire VM.

> I would either suggest lot of collision within your network or with the network
> you are connected to and I think this is a case of Random Collision which would
> be because there is not a case of every 3rd or 5th packet for instance
> to be lost
> due to collision, this causes havoc to packet assembly on your machine as on the
> Server.
> 
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