What is CTAN?

The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network is a set of Internet sites around the world that offer TeX-related material for download.

Structure

CTAN is not a single site, but instead is a set of sites.

Three of the sites form the core. These actively manage the material, for instance, by accepting uploads of new or updated packages. They work closely together to ensure that they hold the same material and maintain the same policies.

http://dante,ctan.org is sponsored by the German TeX group Dante, and is managed by Rainer Schoepf.
http://cam.ctan.org is sponsored by the UK TUG, and is managed by Robin Fairbairns.
http://tug.ctan.org in the US, is sponsored by the TeX Users Group, and is managed by Jim Hefferon.

In addition, other sites around the world help out by mirroring. These sites automatically sync their TeX collections with a core site, and then in turn make their copies publically available. This gives users close to their location better access, and relieves the core sites of network load. We maintain a list of official mirrors; please use one if you can.

Being a Mirror

If you are interested in being an official mirror, that'd be great. (Mirror traffic is light, perhaps one visitor is logged in at any time.) You will need about 10 Gb of hard disk space. and an always-on Internet connection For the setup details, see our mirroring page. Once you are ready, use the signup form. Thank you!

History

Before CTAN there were a number of people who made some TeX materials available for public download, but there was no systemmatic collection. At a podium discussion that Joachim Schrod organized at the 1991 EuroTeX conference, the idea arose to bring together the separate collections. (Joachim was involved because he ran one of the largest ftp servers in Germany at this time and had heavily modified the basic tool mirror.pl for this purpose.)

CTAN was built in 1992, by Rainer Schoepf and Joachim Schrod in Germany, Sebastian Rahtz in the UK, and George Greenwade in the US (George came up with the name). The site structure was put together at the start of 1992 -- Sebastian did the main work -- and synchronized at the start of 1993. The TeX Users Group provided a framework, a Technical Working Group, for this task's organization. CTAN was officially announced at the EuroTeX conference in Aston, 1993. (Note: the familiar Perl archive, CPAN, is based on the CTAN model.)

The US site has moved twice. First, after being at Sam Huston State University under George Greenwade, in 1995 it went to UMass Boston where it was run by Karl Berry. Then, in 1999 it moved to its present home at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont, where it is maintained by Jim Hefferon.