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Types of Mirrors.

A "full archives" mirror is around 210 gigabytes and is slowly increasing. Archives mirrors are updated at least every 24 hours but no more then every 4 hours.

A full list of Ubuntu archive mirrors can be found on the following page

An "Ubuntu releases" mirror is around 40 gigabytes in size and tends to stay relatively constant in size in order to make it easier for mirrors to plan disk space requirements. It is generally updated only a few times a year so updates are usually performed every 24 hours.

A full list of Ubuntu release mirrors can be found on the following page

Official Mirrors and Official Country Mirrors

To become an official mirror, your mirror needs to host the entire contents of either Ubuntu releases or Ubuntu archives. Selectively excluding files which are less popular will causes problems for some users of the mirror and and cannot be done by official mirrors. Official Ubuntu mirrors also need to be publicly accessible. Official Ubuntu mirrors are registered within Launchpad.

Official country mirrors are a default mirror for users within that country to download from. To become an official country mirror, certain bandwidth and technical requirements are needed and special update frequency guidelines must be followed. Official country mirrors also have either a iso-code.archives.ubuntu.com or iso-code.releases.ubuntu.com host names associated with the mirror.

If these additional burdens can be met, please consider emailing mirrors@ubuntu.com requesting to become an official country mirror.

Private Mirrors

Mirrors not listed within Launchpad and/or mirrors who do not meet the technical requirements of becoming an official Ubuntu mirror are considered private mirrors. Large organizations such as Universities who have many Ubuntu installations within their network will benefit from having a private mirror.

Load Balancing Ubuntu Archive mirrors 

It is not at this time possible to load balance between two different Ubuntu archives mirrors because of limitations with the apt-get software unless the two mirrors are in perfect sync, which is very difficult to achieve if they are not on the same LAN.