As far as I can tell, there are no mirrors of the repositories.

Most large (and even small!) free software projects have complete mirrors of their archives. There are a good number of reasons:

* Faster access to users that are far away on the network from the main repo.

* Failover, in case something should happen to the main repository.

* Distributes the load, so poor *.maemo.org doesn't get hit so hard.

* Distributes the bandwidth (costs) so it doesn't all fall on Maemo's shoulders.

Projects with mirrors include the kernel, kde, gnome, Fedora, Debian, etc. Basically every single distribution of note has a mirror--even the tiny ones.

All that would need to be done on the *.maemo.org infrastructure side would be to set up an rsync daemon. This is like 3 lines of configuration and can literally be done in minutes by a good admin.

Then someone could email a few of the big mirrors such as mirrors.kernel.org and ibiblio and voila! done.

Thanks for your consideration,

-Jeff

Or even without setting up rsync:

Info on wiki:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mirrors

Discussion in maemo-devel mailing list:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...ry/023363.html