I'm sure other people have run into this, where they start to download something and are asked to pick a mirror site. Something like:
Please select a mirror:
- foo.example.com (United States)
- bar.example.com (United States)
- baz.example.com (United States)
- grue.example.com (United States)
- zork.example.com (United States)
- some.absurdly.long.domain.example.com (United States)
- us1.example.com (United States)
- us2.example.com (United States)
Well, that's great. It even helpfully suggests I pick the one closest to me. How the hell am I supposed to know which is closest?
So now I've got to either just accept the default choice or pick at random. Here's an idea: just pick for me! If you want to ask me which region I'm closest to, just offer the list of regions and pick randomly within that.
But whatever you do, don't prevent me from changing a mirror if I discover that grue.example.com appears to be unreachable. In fact, if the initial mirror choice turns out to be a poor choice (unreachable after some timeout) try a different one automatically.
I shouldn't have to babysit the download process.