Russell McMahon wrote:
> University of South Africa downloads site
>
>         http://www.icts.uct.ac.za/modules.php?name=Downloads
>
> Printer and other drivers
> Various updates and patches.
>
> Nicely organised.
> User rating system (nobody had rated the Canon S4500 driver I found 
> there).
>
>
>         Russell
>
>   

For the record, South Africa has lousy internet connectivity to "The 
Rest Of The World". Sitting at the tip of Africa where it is 
technologically isolated from the rest of the modern world, it really 
struggles with it's connectivity. My understanding is that the bulk of 
SA's internet runs through ocean-floor fiber connected to the US. 
Connectivity inside of SA is exceptionally good though (for African 
standards), with  many people on broadband.

Due to this limited international bandwidth, SA is very, very good at 
"local" mirroring of commonly sought after downloads. Sites like the one 
above are common in that they reduce the amount of traffic on the 
international pipelines. Most ISPs in SA actively mirror content, either 
explicitly with mirror sites, or implicitly by having huge proxy servers.

People outside of SA using the services of SA mirror sites will undo a 
lot of the advantage that these sites provide to locals.

In this particular case, it is the University of Cape Town.

Anyways, you will see for yourself, downloads from the site will be 
painfully slow, even if well organised. South African will be able to 
access the data at much higher speeds.

Some interesting numbers, the most recent I could find (2002/2003) peg 
South Africa's international bandwidth at about 350Mbps

http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/Reports/GITR_2002_2003/ICT_Africa.pdf

Rolf

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