I was wondering if people want to publish a mirror list for each region to ease the bandwidth for your server
eg is you have common requests for updates based on regions they could download weekly and then people would be directed to local mirror
Yeah, that’s quite possible.
Being able to produce weekly updates for mappers who use the maps to survey their area is one of the strongpoints of this service imho. To me a higher update rate is a big plus. Also there is the competition factor with e.g. Garmin where OSM can say: hey we update our maps every week! 
Tthe server uses precompiled tiles as you describe. The remark about downloading source osm data was just a possible scenario.
CPU power is the problem currently. The server has more tasks to do other then combining and zipping Garmin maps. My hosting sponsor hasn’t complained yet about bandwidth usage, but I expect them to do so now that I’m approaching 500GB/month and I want to prevent that if it’s not necessary. I must say that Oxilon has been a wonderful sponsor and I wouldn’t like to become a burden to them!
Yes, if the tiles would be managed by some client side application then this would be an option. But the tiles are so big that there is not much chance of significant amounts of tiles that don’t change between updates.
That eliminates the uses where only a few tiles are requested (which is the bulk of the requests) and does not profit from the bandwidth savings of such requests. It also eliminates the uniqueness of this service, there are already many other providers of precombined mapsets.
With the current tile limit the CPU usage is back to acceptable levels, requests are handled within an hour instead of day(s), disk usage takes a nose dive and, no doubt, bandwidth usage is much lower. I’m very happy with this. Users that really want a complete copy of (half) the world have to make their own.
Well, maps of countries are already available from other map providers. It’s the uniqueness of each personal request that makes this service stand out and makes mirroring difficult or ineffective at least.
It would be useful if the website could show the file size of the selected tiles, and the total size of them.
Some people are using Garmins with limited memory, so want to know whether the map will fit. And some have slow internet connections, so don’t want huge downloads.
It might also discourage people from downloading half of the world at once.
That would be useful indeed, thanks for the suggestion.
Afaik, Garmins without SD-card do not support routing so they won’t profit from this service. Also the tiles are optimized for maximum size and therefore not very suitable for Garmins with limited memory.
True, but those who have a slow connection can see the size of the downloads when they are ready for download and the user can at that point decide not to download the map but request a smaller one instead. Those people with high bandwidth connections don’t mind downloading two GB so they won’t be discouraged anyway.
Hi Lamerturs,
many thanks für your routable osm-maps for garmin-devices. I am very pleased! It seems to me that the dataset comes without any typefile. I tried to implement some different typfiles using IMG2MS or MapsetToolKit. But always the whole mapsource-Database was corrupted und I had to remove the choosen typfiles to make it workable again.
How can a suitable typefile implemented and/or can I find such suitable typefile?
Best regards
- horst -
In the Consumentengids of May 2009 I found a letter to the editor (translated):
Your article about GPS in the March edition doesn’t mention the free map of the Netherlands for bikes and cars on http://garmin.na1400.info/index.html. This map is based upon OpenStreetMap. After a bit of searching, you can find maps of the United States and countries in Western Europe. This initiative is growing rapidly and the maps are updated weekly.
More publicity! 
I don’t know how to install a TYP file after the gmapsupp.img has been created, however I do know that the TYP file must have the same id (Family, Product, Series?) as the map it comes with.
I’m working on an updated website where you can select a predefined TYP file (and maybe even upload your own TYP) to be included with the combined maps.
Cool, is that a reader comment printed in the Consumentengids as a reaction on an earlier edition or an online comment?
BTW, for foreign readers, the Consumentengids is a monthly (?) glossy from the consumer interest organisation in the Netherlands. It contains product reviews, comparative tests, articles about specific laws etc.
I am a relatively new gps user but I ran across your service and think it is great. I use the North America maps and have found your site the only one that provides open source routable maps for North America. I have access to a server with significant bandwidth and may be able set up a mirror site. I would be particularly interested in hosting an area file for all of North America. Would you be at all interested in setting something up?
Thank you for your offer. There are some technical things we need to discuss before you and I say: let’s go for it. I think it’s best to work this out via private email so you’ll be hearing from me.
“I’m really sorry I had to do this but there are simply too many people who are apparently going on a journey around the world.”
Hi Lambertus!
In fact, I AM starting a round the world journey in 4 weeks, so I would have to request a lot of tiles. Should I do this in small bites or would you prefer I shove off from your server entirely? I’m concerned that even if I request a lot of small sections (and put them together with one of the Map Tool apps) it will still cause you server problems.
What is your advice?
Thanks!
I don’t mind if you request more than one combined map from the server. You can also just download the tiles from the server without performing a combine request. Just downloading does not stress the server.
One way of doing is this is to select all the tiles that you need for your journey and copy the list of tilenumbers into a text editor. Examine the url of one of those tiles and copy it in front of the list of tilenumbers. Then batch download the tiles using a tool like wget.
Example of tile list:
http://planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/16-04-2009/63240001.img
http://planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/16-04-2009/63240002.img
http://planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/16-04-2009/63240003.img
http://planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/16-04-2009/63240004.img
http://planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/16-04-2009/63240005.img
etc
Hi - I’m brand new to owning a Garmin GPS and discovered the freely available maps on OpenStreetMap and your site - THANKS!!!
Unfortunately, I’m having a little problem. I select a set of tiles in Canada (Eastern Ontario), just north of the Great Lakes. But when I run the .exe file to install the mapset on my PC, all I see in Mapsource are a set of Points of Interest. A couple of times I’ve seens some roads that are in the US (Just south of the lakes), but nothing from Canada - And nothing in the way of shores, rivers, etc.
Has anyone else seen this, or am I just simply not doing something right. I’m running the latest version of MapSource from Garmin’s site.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Is there data available on the map on this site for the area that you’re interested in?
The Garmin maps are based upon OpenStreetMap data and our coverage is not everywhere as good as we would like (but you can help us gaining that coverage ofcourse!).
Yes. I can see all the roads in the Ottawa area on openstreetmaps.com. But they don’t show up in mapsource, when I run the downloaded routable .exe file.
Sorry - typed the URL in the previous message incorrectly. Sholuld have been openstreetmap.org (the link you provided). The streets do also show up on the map where I select the tiles.
Hi,
First of all thanks for the service. Seriously appreciated. I use the maps here in Korea to add more to OSM whenever I go out riding. So …
I was wondering if there were any chance you could add the --name-tag-list=name:en to your command line or at least make it a checkable option, if possible? Having a Garmin that doesn’t support Asian characters makes for a lot of confusion (???) on place and street names.
And while on the subject of command line options, the --add-pois-to-areas would also be very useful for making schools, parks and other buildings searchable.
I am not sure how your scripting works, and my coding days are rather far behind me, but perhaps you could set up a page where the user could check off a number of command line options that would then be passed through when building with mkgmap .
I know you have your own plans and are already working hard on this. I am just thinking out loud.
I do try and make my own maps now and then, but the process seems to be a bit hit and miss for me at the moment.
Again, thanks a lot. Have a great day.
Robert
Right, then there is something wrong with the build process for that area. I’ll look at it.
Yes, there are lots of problems in that area (code pages and such). I’m working on a new version where you can set all kinds of parameters if you want to. Be patient though, it’s impacting everything ofcourse so it requires some time.
Good idea, I’ll add that to the list as well.
That’s what I’m working at currently.
Yes, I’ve had my share of misses too
Great to hear it. I’ll be looking forward to it and will try to be patient. 
Have a great day.
Robert
Hello,
Preliminarily I installed several tiles on my gpsmap 60csx and on Mapsource.
The version on the 60csx I combined with a typfile as provided for the complete Germany routable map of OSM.
On both versions (device / MS) I now have the same problem:
When zooming out beyond a scale of 3 km the OSM-roads disappear. The principal roads may dissapear partially and disappear completely with the next step (5 km)
The roads of the basemap remain visible.
Beyond a scale of 5 km the map looks quite useless:
The OSM-roads are disappeared, while the rivers and the private/public boundaries remained visible. As I understood, the problem relies to the levels attached to the various elements, but I cannot identify whether this is a problem of the OSM-data or the generation of the map.
Best regards,
Gibuld
I tried downloading two sets of tiles. When I installed the second, the first one was removed from Mapsource (same product code I guess).
Is there an easy way to add tiles from a second download to one that was gotten earlier?
Is there still an option to get a (cached) ‘all tiles’ download?