I have been able to successfully create a local
repository and use that as my media source. I am
using as my source:
rsync://mageia.mirror.dkm.cz
Data rates are good even though they are thousands
of miles away. Using exactly the same commands I am
unable to use:
rsync://mirrors.kernel.org
Even though I use kernel.org as my source for Mandriva.
I tried lots of other sources but found them way
to slow. I live in San Diego CA a long way away
from most of the servers. The Mageia repo presently
contains about 18,290 files and 20GB of data. I
typically update my repo's about 1x per day.