Frederik Ramm (frede...@remote.org) wrote:
Hi,
for a few years now, the Geofabrik download server
(download.geofabrik.de) has been serving various, daily updated,
regional OSM extracts, in XML and shape file form, and for the last
half year also in PBF form.
After a few hiccups in the past weeks, I have moved the server to
new infrastructure with more of everything so that you shouldn't see
any more "503 service unavailable" messages (except when you're
really trying very hard to abuse the machine).
Before, the .pbf and .bz2 and .shp files were all created on a
machine in the Geofabrik office and uploaded to the download server
for distribution, and with the office only having 10 MBit upstream
connectivity, there was a limit to how much could be transferred
every night. I'm now slowly changing to a setup where the .bz2 and
perhaps eventually even the .shp files will be created directly on
the download server, giving me more room to create additional
extracts (think US states) and upload them in the time we've saved.
Together with the added disk space on the download server this means
that I can continue supporting the bz2 format indefinitely, although
I expect it gradually to fall behind in currency (currently, the bz2
will show up a few hours after the .pbf; in the future this might
increase to half a day or so). The .pbf format is definietly the
preferred format.
I would like to thank GWDG who are hosting a mirror for the Europe
and Germany extract, by far the most popular files on the download
server. The server will redirect you to their mirror if and only if
it is clear from the log files that the mirror has the complete
latest version of a file. (This is new, too - before, it was
possible that the server would redirect you to a stale copy on the
mirror.)
You're welcome to continue using the server - but even though all is
new and shiny now, please act responsibly and download only what you
need. Hoarding doesn't make sense - who wants yesterday's geodata
anyway?
Bye
Frederik
Do you publish any stats on your downloads (top 50 extracts, location
of downloaders, frequency of re-visit etc). Would be interesting to
see.
--
Charlie
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