Slow downloading of updates with Fedora 8

I've noticed recently, that updates for Fedora have been taking ages to download.  There is a solution though.  Install yum-fastestmirror:

and you'll be getting your updates nice and fast again.  I've just tried this, and found it working a treat.

Some people have experienced that yum-fastestmirror has sometimes connected to slower mirrors instead of picking a faster one.  I've not noticed this yet, but it's early days since I've only started using it.  You can, then instead install yum-presto.

and then see if it's any better than using yum-fastestmirror.  I will update though if I see any problems in the future with yum-fastestmirror.

I've also seen other suggestions for installing smart-gui.  This opens more connections than yum or yumex, meaning you can get to download faster this way also.  The downside is that you have to configure smart-gui repos manually.  Then, it can take a load of disk space with it's ever-increasing cache.  If you have loads of disk space, then maybe give it a try.  However, I don't like to waste disk space, especially if it's just a cache for a package manager!