The Dink Network

Site News: New File Mirror

April 12th 2003, 07:50 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
I've decided to use some of the Community Funds to test out the viability of a new file mirror, which is quite fast and doesn't require registration. Currently, As Good As Eternity, Dry, Friends Beyond 3, Pilgrim's Quest, Prophecy of the Ancients, and Stone of Balance are mirrored. To download one of these D-Mods off of the new mirror, go to the file's page and click on the 'dink.fileburst.com' link.

Unfortunately, there is that one rather large caveat: we have to pay for it. For more information, view the comments.

FilePlanet has annoying pop-up ads, required registration, problems with download resumers, waiting in lines, and a whole bunch of other annoying elements. However, it is free.

And so I started looking for a good, cheap file mirror last fall, and came up empty handed. But then recently, I stumbled upon one I hadn't seen before... that seemed pretty good. It was specifically meant for files, not web pages. And it is Fileburst.

So the problem becomes how are we going to pay for this thing. We have a little over $100 in the Dink Network Community Fund, with about $70 earmarked for other things. So we have a little over $30 to test how things go.

The thing is, I'm not sure how much money it is going to cost a month to pay for the file mirror. I'm guessing anywhere from $20-$40, maybe much more. So I'm testing it with the largest files, to see how much we're going to transfer.

But if we're going to keep this file mirror for any amount of time, we're going to need some donations. It just costs $1 for 25 people to download Pilgrim's Quest, or 100 people to download Stone of Balance.

So if don't want FilePlanet, and want this new, fast server to stay, then put your money where your mind is. Just donate a couple bucks by clicking on the Donate button on the left side-bar. If nobody donates over the next few weeks, we won't be able to expand the new mirror for every D-Mod, and will probably have to close the account.
April 12th 2003, 08:03 PM
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Sounds like a cool idea. I still think the files should be in .ace format b/c winace is better than winzip and winrar. That way those huge files can be smaller, but then not everybody has winace.

Anyways it's really your choice but please keep fileplanet as a backup b/c I have no trouble in d/l stuff from there.

Thanks!
April 12th 2003, 08:08 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
The goal would to always have FilePlanet... its free, and there is no reason not to use it.
April 12th 2003, 09:18 PM
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IvanMZ
Peasant They/Them
 
I can extract .ace files, but this format is really very unknown for the common people, in my opinion. In fact, I have only downloaded one of this files in all my life.

I do not have problems with FilePlanet.

I think that only excellent and huge files must be stored in a paid site.
But really in my opinion, if I would be redink1, I would not spend the scant and valuable money for download purposes.

Sigh.. I am tired of using the dictionary.
April 13th 2003, 01:00 AM
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A new mirror would've been great for me a month ago.
April 13th 2003, 03:38 AM
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gustav
Peasant He/Him
 
I'd love to contribute some cash, but my parents won't let me. sorry.
I still think it's a good idea, because I have to turn off my pop-up killer when using file planet.
April 13th 2003, 05:07 AM
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ilya
Peasant They/Them
 
It might be because it's the morning but, 200k a second is fast enough for me to donate a couple bucks a month.
April 13th 2003, 06:24 AM
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kory
Peasant He/Him Croatia
 
It should be a faster transfer. For pilgrim's quest 3 hours are too way much!
April 13th 2003, 06:25 AM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
If you have dial-up internet, there isn't much the file mirror can do to speed up your transfer.

If you have broadband, it shouldn't take anywhere near 3 hours to download PQ... more like 10 minutes.
April 13th 2003, 01:57 PM
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safmoor
Peasant He/Him
 
If you really want to download the dmods fast, you can subscribe to fileplanet and you get high speed connections.
April 13th 2003, 07:47 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Well, after about 24 hours, the results are kinda good. We've transferred $0.83 (846 MB) so far. So I'd estimate, if all of the D-Mods were mirrored on FileBurst, we'd probably transfer about $1.50 to $2.00 (1.5 GB to 2 GB) a day, with the amount going up if a new D-Mod was released.
April 14th 2003, 04:47 AM
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I'll consider donating some, perhaps by buying merchandise. My parents never understand when I ask them to give donations. They don't get the reason for it and when you try and explain that it's a new server etc. etc. they haven't a clue what you're on about. I've got about £20 in English money spare though, that's about $24 dollars so I'll try and donate
April 14th 2003, 03:09 PM
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lavrik
Peasant They/Them
 
Theres realy not many things u download after u played through all the Dmods its just little additions from time to time
April 14th 2003, 03:40 PM
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Chrispy
Peasant He/Him Canada
I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to.I guess. 
There is one thing though, there will be a lot of people on dial-up using the new server not because its fast but becuase they don't know any better (newbies) and because they can get around the line-ups at fileplanet.

I just think the system could be abused to much. (someone going freak and downloading PQ 50 times cause they got pissed off)
IMHO this is a bad idea.
April 14th 2003, 03:46 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Well it helps dial-up people too. With FilePlanet, you have a 24 hour window for which to download and resume the file. With Fileburst, you can download it in little chunks over the course of many days, as the file name never changes.
April 14th 2003, 03:51 PM
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Chrispy
Peasant He/Him Canada
I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to.I guess. 
But my main concern still stands, is there anyway to prevent abuses? Like needing a login, and having a limit of 1 download a day? Or something?
Meh, I hope this works out.
April 14th 2003, 03:55 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
There is a way to prevent abuses... but I think you're pretty paranoid about people abusing it. Nobody will, or maybe somebody will now because you mentioned it on the forums.
April 14th 2003, 04:03 PM
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Chrispy
Peasant He/Him Canada
I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to.I guess. 
Meh, you can deleat this little string if you want. Maybe that would be for the best. I don't know.
It's not paranoia, I just don't want the comunity to go down the hole.
April 14th 2003, 04:09 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
My debit card going over balance would not equal the community going down the hole. It'd just equal me begging my parents for money
April 14th 2003, 04:16 PM
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Chrispy
Peasant He/Him Canada
I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to.I guess. 
Well, as they say, Its your money.
April 17th 2003, 05:03 PM
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Jothki
Peasant They/Them
 
I just tried the file mirror, and I love it. It was much faster than FilePlanet, and when AOL kicked me off for no apparent reason, my download progress was kept. I would love to see Fileburst continue to be used.

Since downloads have to be paid for, it would probably be a good idea to only use it for epics. For smaller D-mods, there is less need for the faster downloads and progress saving that Fileburst gives.
April 17th 2003, 07:33 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Yeah... I'll probably have some sort of file size limit for files to be stored on Fileburst. So far we've transferred 2.82 GB ($2.82 worth) over a span of about 4 days. And that equals about $0.70 a day, $20 a month. And that's relatively reasonable.