Browsing from Spain, automatic mirror selection based on Directi Ip-to-Country Database, moves us to http://es.php.net.
Unfortunately, that mirror is very slow: about 40 seconds to load home page, even if we are one of the 3 fastest ISP on the country AND mirror is in our country. It is better and 20 times faster for us to navigate directly to www.php.net. The problem is that every page we ask to www.php.net, goes to es.php.net, no matter if we change "es" with "www" in address bar.
The whole redirection is done because the central PHP server is most of the time under a very high load, and therefore unable to serve requests. So even given that your connection is very good to the www.php.net server, it would not be able to serve you.
¿Is it possible to>
a) offer country determination as a default option BUT give users the chance to stop it and select their prefered mirror?
We have this option :) You can pick any other mirror, and you won't get redirected. Only php.net uses a redirection strategy. BTW we probably add a "preferred mirror" selection to the my php.net feature set in the near future, but I can assure you that www.php.net won't be there as an option, for the reasons mentioned above.
b) ask for minimal performance to mirrors?
We have an open bug report about the es.php.net server in particular. I have also contacted the maintainer, and he assured me that the server will be behind a better connection in a month. I have provided some reasons at the bug report why we are unable to measure the speed of a mirror. If you have any ideas to help us, please post them there, so we can track them ;)
Please also note that if we disable the es.php.net for that month [which as it seems will be inevitable], you will get redirected to a random mirror site [different every time] from www.php.net.
So for now, it is the best to pick any other mirror, that has good speed for you. Every mirror has the exact same service. Or if there is any problem at some mirror, feel free to report.
Thanks for your comment, sorry for the inconvinience,
Goba