Since about 10 days the server is down, and well to say I'm pretty pissed of myself about not being able to publish new maps. Especially as the VeloMap creation process is broken since 18 January too and no maps can be downloaded. Here some FAQ regarding the downtime. The old server seems to have crashed completly and impossible to get it back up.
Though I have no exact traffic counts, because I can only guestimate the number of downloads (I only have statictics for people donwloading via the map download page and not people getting maps directly without redirection from the server, I know that alone by clicks on the Map Download page, on some days last summer more than 600GB of maps were downloaded (that was about 500-600 downloads of Germany, 300x Italy, and so on). Next summer that will be twice the traffic from last summer, by OSM data doubling alone (not taking into account that more people use the maps, as the homepage itself traffic grows consistently -- currently bout 2000 visitors a day even though no maps available)
I will not offer Torrents for download, because
a) it would still need a very fast server to send the maps out - and I doubt more than 50% of traffic could be handled by seeders except the server
b) Most servers are very simple infrastructure, and torrents require much more software backend and more CPU time. It would make matters much more complicated
c) I like torrents, but for content that is static. In theory the contourlinemap downloads. However they don't cause much traffic at all. Hence I don't see the need for that.
d) I know no plugin for WordPress, that could automatically change the torrents every week, so more handwork to link new torrents (not really that much important as a-c are already enough of a showstopper to me).
Domainbox seems to be unable to provide me with a new server (or I did not hear back anything positive about a new server). I have asked for mirroring at GDWG but have not heard anything bout it since 2 days. So I still hope that they could mirror the maps (I would upload them onto the same server as the website and also start rendering the VeloMap myself in that case).
Commercial servers for downloads are utopical and I would stop creating maps in that case. First and foremost most users would not be willing to pay (especially new users) and if I had to pay for say Amazon S3, than a single map download from Germany would have to be like €0,30. (or differently said, every month a 4digit amount to be paid for hosting). Costs would probably be 20-50x of what I got via donations (last months less than 100€ per month). And for people that believe the 50€/month unlimited traffic servers read the terms and all will kick me out after a few days if lucky, probably within 24 hours....
One click hosters are also no option to me (inconvenient, not possible to choose same name again, meaning updates painful to link, many people dislike one click hosters, and simply not what I want).
Maybe you could try to voice your support to get the openmtbmaps on GWDG by "shouting" it out on OSM mailinglists/forum (e.g. see my request here in German: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=139876#p139876) . Else I see no real solution right now. Traffic is simply too high for a simple server.
P.S. besides spending time trying to get a server which makes no fun at all, mkgmap address search seems to be soon working correctly. Maybe next week correctly working address search (as for the format is correct, there will then need to be work on correctly reading in the OSM content for the address search) is ready. Already right now address search in Mapsource AND BASECAMP! is working correctly on mkgmap index development branch. Also quite a few improvements on the mapstyle have been implemented...
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