Well, I'm going to let off some steam.
I'm on Demon, using the CWC 50p offer. I'm getting Star Office weighing in at around 70Mb. There's not much competition in the office world so I guess this is going to have to do.
So I start downloading from the Amsterdam mirror. It stalls more than it comes down. I abort and try the US East Coast; this one's fast without stalling.
Whoops. Netscape crashes at 15%, 3hrs 30mins to go. I go back to the website and try grabbing it again. Oh no! The webserver to manage download accounts is down.
In dispair, I find sun.co.uk, a lovely fast mirror. But oh no - the Star Office download goes back to the US. Why?
I try once again, and his time I'm not getting any response at all. In fact, a 503 Server Not Responding comes up. I hit reload a few times and am finally presented with a response: Your Session Has Expired.
I have now written to Sun blasting them for not keeping sun.co.uk in the UK. It's diabolically stupid to maintain a mirror when critical parts are left in one country susceptable to crashes and downtime.
If any of you are put into the position when you're asked to setup mirrors or something similar, think of my tale of woe and think harder than the people in management - do the right thing and mirror in full.
grrrr.