We had a few discussions in the last days about what would be a good way to make PyPI more reliable.

It think there were a bit of confusion about the mirroring protocol (PEP 381) and its goals, versus the reliability of the current PyPI main server.

Some people were basically saying (I am paraphrashing)

Just move PyPI to a CDN and be done with it, this mirroring thing is too complicated.

Well, ok. We could set up a CDN for our PyPI files and have all our archives at Amazon or elsewhere.

But since the mirroring protocol is implemented and available on server-side (We have 5 active mirrors), and since Pip already supports switching to a mirror, the shortest path to a better PyPI is simply to :

create a new mirror in a <put the name of the best provider> CDN and register it as a mirror at PyPI

And if it's so better, so reliable and fast, maybe we'll move it up in the mirrors list, as the first one so all clients should pick it by default.

And the day <put the name of the best provider> is down. (yeah it happens, remember EC2 a few months ago), you will all be thankful that we have other mirrors and a protocol to switch over them !

So, if you think a CDN is the magic solution, go ahead. Grab pep381client, set up your monster infrastructure, and let me know so I add it in the list or mirrors. And maybe we will never ever call another server again. Or maybe not.

For further info, here is a detailed summary of PyPI status we've built with Noah: http://wiki.python.org/moin/BetterPyPI

Related: I am going to submit a tutorial on how to work with PyPI, mirrors, private packages etc., to show how I do at Mozilla