why mirrors ?

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Running SUSE 10.1 64bit.  Issued 'smart update'.

It downloaded (apparently successfully) files primary.xml.gz and
filelists.xml.gz for Packman from a mirror in Germany.  Then it
*again* downloaded those same two files from a mirror in Belgium
(apparently successfully).  Now it is **again** downloading those
same two files from a mirror in Austria !!!

At approximately 1.0 KBps (my dial-up line has other transfers
going on, too), it seems to be taking _forever_ for the 'smart
update' to complete.  WHY does smart have to download more than
one copy of these (huge) files (I see no error messages) ??

mikus  (smart 0.49.1-40.guru.suse101)