Well, Oxilion is sponsoring this server and Iām certainly not complaining about their service level or commitment, in contrary. They also sponsor a development and tileserver for the Dutch OSM community, host the OSM forum and sponsor a server for my online routing website yournavigation.org. But, although they have been very supportive so far, Iām reluctant to ask for even more.
I believe that a combination of allowed high cpu usage and lots of traffic for little money is a rare combination in the hosting business. I also donāt have the illusion that somehow showing a few adds on the website is going to compensate for moving to a rented server at hosting company X. Or am I missing something?
An alternative might be to disable user-custom tile selection builds and focus on the pre-built sets of pre-defined regions, ie. a set of tiles for each country, or larger or smaller regions based on population and map density. Then the builds could be mirrored across a number of sites. When a user selects a pre-defined set, they could be given URLs for a mirror site from which to download instead. This should reduce bandwidth, harddisk space and CPU issues.
I would be happy to put a mirror of pre-built OSM maps for Garmin on my site - my site currently serves around 150GB of (non-OSM) garmin maps and Iām only paying 6USD/month.
This suggestion has popped-up a few times now but Iām very weary of it. If someone is just looking for a single country then they already have lotās of choices. The novelty of this service is that you can have it combine and pre-package tiles from multiple countries in an relatively simple way. Going back to āonly countriesā would be a huge step back IMHO and would make this service just one of many.I think that: āif itās just about countries, then I think itās best for the OSM community in each country to provide the Garmin mapsā.
So, in short: going back to whole countries only is the last resort and I might just shut the operation down at that point. I do really appreciate the offer for providing alternative hosting though!
It may be me that is confused (again) but I got the impression that shonkylogic was suggesting dividing the map into a lot more tiles. This would mean that some people could download much smaller sections. In my case it would reduce the files from a bout 15mb down to 5mb or less.
I donāt know if I am typical but I only work on a very small area and only use a slightly larger area for my GPS.
Of course dividing the map into many more tiles may be a lot of work for Lambertus who obviously already has a heavy workload so it may not be practical.
Sorry Skywoolf, I wasnāt suggesting that tiles be split any further - I think the splitting is done automatically based on map feature density?
I was suggesting that popular map requests be pre-compiled and mirrored to take load off the server. Lambertus is correct that some sets are available elsewhere for some countries and regions but not all. And many countries do not provide a mapsource-installer format.
However I totally understand and agree with Lambertusā reply. This is indeed a unique service, the core issue is that itās become too popular for the available resources.
Another idea might be to offload the maps to an alternative hosting provider once theyāre compiled, that way your own disk remains relatively clean.
Indeed, Iām trying to create tiles with maximum tile area because the maps created by Mkgmap have (had? Donāt recall exactly from the top of my head.) problems routing over more then one tile edge. This might not be a problem in Asia where the data density is mostly not very high, but caused many problems in Western Europe. Also, but this is not an issue anymore, earlier versions of the tools to create the maps could handle only 255 tiles (there are about 800 now).
Fair point, but could partly be a chicken and egg problem. Alternatively I could just stop providing maps for Europe and North America.
Thanks. Limits have been hit before and each time a solution has expanded usability, functionality and allowed even more users, but now that the low hanging fruit has been eaten it just gets a bit more difficult to improve. Improvements should still be possible though, I like greencapsā suggestion.
This suggestion is interesting. I reckon itās susceptible to break-down and requires quite a bit of bookkeeping but it could move the limit a bit further. Pure hosting (without the CPU cycles for map generation) is cheap, at least in the USA and -like you- there should be some people who would contribute some spare space. Yes I like it, but as always, it will take time to develop.
There is a request backlog due to server problems yesterday, it might take a while for the server to catch up. So expect your maps to arrive a bit later then usual.
Iām trying to create a map of Germany, but when I select Germany from the menu it says I use to many tiles. Is there a way to get a complete map of Germany?
Yes there is. If youāre just interested in a single very large (in mapping terms) country (E.g. Germany or USA) then you might want to download from one of the many other map providers.
There are quite a number of free file hosting services around where you can store the files for free and people can d/l for free, if they are prepared to wait 30-60 secs. Iām not sure if you can automate the uploads, thoughā¦
Not sure if those services will be happy to accept around 150 GB every 48 hours from one IP address, but itās an option to look into. Thanks.
Some planet dump problems and big internet connection problems at home (my ADSL connection dropped from 12 mbit to around 700 kbit down in two weeks) No way Iām going to use that little bit for downloading the planet. Sorry, but updates will have to wait until the connection is repaired or the modem is replaced.
I have a question about using Open Street Map on my Garmin 450. I live by St. Louis, MO so I downloaded the sections for southern Illinois and much of Missouri over to Kansas.
So, if I want to route from my home in Illinois to an address in Kansas City, I go to select my first point (Route Planner - Create Rouse - Select First Point - Use Map) and I select āUseā at the bottom of the screen as there is a way point pin on my home address. Then I go back and choose (Select Next Point - Addresses - Spell State/Province). When I select that and spell āMissouriā, a message comes up āNo Results Found. Try Adjusting Search Parametersā.
What am I doing wrong? Will OpenStreetMap allow me to put in actual street addresses and route me to them?
For starters, I would leave the state blank, as it may or may not be mapped as such. Try putting in the street name and the city or suburb. I donāt normally create routes on my GPS, other than to pan and āEnterā on a point on the map and choose āGotoā. That should always work.