Is there any way to speed up apt-get ?

[Bob Nielsen]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 06:35:45AM +0100, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> > In new york city, you can barely get anything above 5Mbps, and that's
> > lucky. Most people with broadband only have 2 or 3Mbps, although
> > Verizon is releasing Fiber at 15Mbps, but that's not gonna happen for
> > quite some time. I'm surprised you can get 20Mbps so easily. Lots of
> > people here still use free 56k connections, or even (gasp!) AOL
> 
> Wow, here in France we always get the impression that the states have
> the best of the best in internet connections, and that we are always
> lagging far away behind. Weird.
> I didn't realise I was that lucky to get 20Mbps, I thought if I got
> that, then the states must have at least twice as good.
> Maybe France is not that crap anymore IT wise then, although many people
> don't have computers, and if you look at EBay, There are about
> (litterally) 10 times less stuff on Ebay France, than there is in
> comparable European countries like the UK or Germany.
> So there is still much to do in terms of getting people to actually use
> their computer and internet...

Not only does the US lag a bit in internet speed, the costs here tend to 
be somewhat higher than in many other countries.  It is changing, but 
slowly.

When I was in France (Roubaix) last year, I noticed that there were many
more internet cafés than I have seen in the U.S.  I suppose that is
somewhat a reflection of the lower computer/people ratio there.  It was
nice to have them available for email, etc., but if I could have found
one which supported SSH, that would have been better, as I could have
connected back into my home system rather than use Yahoo (someone
suggested I load puTTy on a USB stick and carry it with me). 

Bob