Mirror website

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Mirror websites or mirrors are replicas of other websites or any network node. The concept of mirroring applies to network services accessible through any protocol, such as HTTP or FTP. Such sites have different URLs than the original site, but host identical or near-identical content. [1] Mirror sites are often located in a different geographic region than the original, or upstream site. The purpose of mirrors is to reduce network traffic, improve access speed, ensure availability of the original site for technical [2] or political reasons, [3] or provide a real-time backup of the original site. [4] [5] [6] Mirror sites are particularly important in developing countries, where internet access may be slower or less reliable. [7] The maintainers of some mirrors choose not to replicate the entire contents of the upstream server they're mirroring because of technical constraints, or selecting only a subset relevant to their purpose, such as software written in a particular programming language, runnable on a single computer platform, or written by one author. These sites are called partial mirrors or secondary mirrors. [8]

Contents

Mirror sites were heavily used on the early internet, when most users accessed through dialup and the Internet backbone had much lower bandwidth than today, making a geographically-localized mirror network a worthwhile benefit. Download archives such as Info-Mac, Tucows and CPAN maintained worldwide networks mirroring their content accessible over HTTP or anonymous FTP. Some of these networks, such as Info-Mac or Tucows are no longer active or have removed their mirrored download sections, but some like CPAN or the Debian package mirrors are still active in 2019. Debian removed FTP access to its mirrors in 2017 because of declining use and the relative stagnation of the FTP protocol, mentioning FTP servers' lack of support for techniques such as caching and load balancing that are available to HTTP. [9]

Examples

Notable websites with mirrors include Project Gutenberg, [10] KickassTorrents, [11] [12] [13] [14] The Pirate Bay, [15] [16] [17] [18] WikiLeaks, [19] [20] the website of the Environmental Protection Agency, [21] [22] and Wikipedia. [23] [24] [25] Some notable partial mirrors include free and open-source software projects such as GNU, [26] in particular Linux distributions such as Debian [27] and Fedora; [28] such projects provide mirrors of the download sites (since those expected to have high load), but not do necessarily mirror the main websites.

It was once common for tech companies such as Microsoft, Hewlet-Packard or Apple Computer to maintain a network of mirrors accessible over HTTP or anonymous FTP, hosting software updates, sample code and various freely-downloadable utilities. Much of these sites were shutdown in the first decades of the 21st century, with Apple shutting down its FTP services in 2012 and Microsoft stopping updates in 2010. [29] [30] Today, the contents of a number of these mirror sites are archived at https://archive.org/details/ftpsites&tab=collection

Occasionally, some people will use web scraping software to produce static dumps of existing sites, such as the BBC's Top Gear and RedFlagDeals.

See also

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The Pirate Bay Website providing torrent files and magnet links

The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

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Torrentz BitTorrent metasearch engine

Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy. Founded in July 24, 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites, and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.

BELNET Belgian internet service provider

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EZTV

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OpenMediaVault Linux distribution

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KickassTorrents website providing torrent files and magnet links

KickassTorrents was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.

Countries blocking access to The Pirate Bay

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InterPlanetary File System content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol

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1337x BitTorrent-related website

1337x is a website that provides a directory of torrent files and magnet links used for peer-to-peer file sharing through the BitTorrent protocol. According to the TorrentFreak news blog, 1337x is the third most popular torrent website as of 2018.

Torrent Project former bittorrent metasearch engine

The Torrent Project or Torrent Search Project was a metasearch engine for torrent files, which consolidates links from other popular torrent hosting pages such as ExtraTorrent. It has been suggested as an alternative for the now closed Torrentz.eu site and KickassTorrents, and its index includes over 8 million torrent files, and has been said to have a very clean, simple interface. Beyond allowing torrent files of popular films it also carries self-produced content. The torrentproject.com URL was part of a 2014 United Kingdom High Court decision, which ordered it to be blocked. It has an API that allows the search function to be integrated into applications, and the news-site TorrentFreak has suggested that allow streaming in the future, and it has adopted the Torrents Time plugin.

YIFY Peer-to-peer movies release group

YIFY Torrents or YTS is a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their HD video quality in a small file size, which attracted many downloaders. The original YIFY/YTS website was shut down by the MPAA in 2015; however, a website imitating the YIFY/YTS brand still gains a significant amount of traffic. 'YIFY' is derived from the name of the website's founder, Yiftach Swery.

References

  1. ↑ Glushko, Robert J. (2014-08-25). The Discipline of Organizing: Core Concepts Edition. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN   9781491912812 . Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  2. ↑ "Debian worldwide mirror sites". Using a nearby server will probably speed up your download, and also reduce the load on our central servers and on the Internet as a whole.
  3. ↑ "Impending Trump has Internet Archive mirror to Canada". The Internet Archive has several mirrors up right now, and Canada is set to be its next. This move is taking place specifically because of the new presidential elect Trump here in the United States.
  4. ↑ "What is Mirror Site? Webopedia Definition". www.webopedia.com. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  5. ↑ "What is Mirror Site? - Definition from Techopedia". Techopedia.com. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  6. ↑ Wisshak, Max; Tapanila, Leif (2008-06-02). Current Developments in Bioerosion. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   9783540775973 . Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  7. ↑ "Internet mirror sites - The Lancet". We all become frustrated when web pages take minutes to unfold. This can increase the gap between infrastructure haves and have-nots. Downloading time is important for other reasons; users connecting to the internet via telephone line in many countries are charged per minute and slow downloading itself may make users lose interest.
  8. ↑ "Debian worldwide mirror sites". A secondary mirror site may have restrictions on what they mirror
  9. ↑ "Debian Project to Shut Down Its Public FTP Services, Developers Are Not Affected". The decision to close the Debian FTP services for users was made because the FTP servers in their current state lack support for acceleration or caching, and they aren't quite used lately due to the fact that the Debian Installer no longer provides an FTP option for accessing mirrors since more than ten years ago... FTP as a protocol appears to no longer be efficient, requiring adding strange workarounds to firewalls and load-balancing daemons.
  10. ↑ "Project Gutenberg". In addition, dozens of “mirror” Web sites were created around the world, where the e-books were also stored and available for downloading.Text " nonprofit organization" ignored (help)
  11. ↑ Russon, Mary-Ann (22 July 2016). "Kickass Torrents is back: New domains, mirrors and proxies show business is as usual". International Business Times UK. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  12. ↑ Clark, Bryan (21 July 2016). "IsoHunt just launched a working KickassTorrent mirror". The Next Web. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  13. ↑ "Mexican Police Target Popular KickassTorrents 'Clone,' Seize Domain - TorrentFreak". TorrentFreak. 23 September 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  14. ↑ Wei, Wang. "New Kickass Torrents Site is Back Online by Original Staffers". The Hacker News. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  15. ↑ "The Piratebay Blocked By Chrome, Mirror Sites Accessible". iTech Post. 8 October 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  16. ↑ "The Pirate Bay is blocked Australia wide... except it really isn't". CNET. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  17. ↑ "Pirate Bay Mirror Shut Down: Alternative Clone Had Kickass Torrents Skin, Vows To Continue". Tech Times. 24 September 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  18. ↑ "Pirate Bay Blocked By Google Chrome And Firefox: Kickass Torrents Mirror, Extratorrent, Torrentz And Other Clones Accessible". Tech Times. 8 October 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  19. ↑ Greenemeier, Larry. "How Has WikiLeaks Managed to Keep Its Web Site Up and Running?". Scientific American. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  20. ↑ Schroeder, Stan. "WikiLeaks Now Has Hundreds of Mirrors". Mashable. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  21. ↑ "The EPA Posted a Mirror of Its Website Before Trump Can Gut the Real One". Vice. 2017-02-16. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  22. ↑ Hiltzik, Michael (24 April 2017). "Did 'people power' save a trove of EPA data from a shutdown by Trump?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  23. ↑ "How to set up your own copy of Wikipedia - ExtremeTech". ExtremeTech. 18 January 2012. Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  24. ↑ Broughton, John (2008). Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN   9780596515164 . Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  25. ↑ Ayers, Phoebe; Matthews, Charles; Yates, Ben (2008). How Wikipedia Works: And how You Can be a Part of it. No Starch Press. ISBN   9781593271763 . Retrieved 29 April 2017.
  26. ↑ "gnu.org". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2017-08-27.
  27. ↑ "Debian worldwide mirror sites". www.debian.org. Retrieved 2017-08-27.
  28. ↑ "Home - MirrorManager". admin.fedoraproject.org. Retrieved 2017-08-27.
  29. ↑ "How do I access the MICROSOFT FTP server?".
  30. ↑
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