OSM's future. Was: Re: [Openstreetmap] OSM Performance is terrible

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 11:34:35AM +0000, SteveC wrote:
> * @ 02/02/06 09:39:10 AM noodles at earth.li wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 12:29:57AM +0000, SteveC wrote:
> > > I and other people here have been quietly looking at _sustainable_ ways
> > > of getting OSM fast and reliable hosting. Let's look at OSM right now.
> > > It runs on 5 computers. www, tile, db, backup and dev. All of these
> > > machines are hosted at the university I went to and worked at. Past
> > > tense.
> > > 
> > > They are for lack of a better word, borrowed. Apart from dev
> > > which is Nicks. The hosting is also borrowed and the machines sit in an
> > > office being noisy and annoying people. Given that I'm not there any
> > > more, questions are starting to arise about these machines.
> > > 
> > > Even at 5 OK-spec machines with excellent JANET hosting, it's not that
> > > fast. So we probably need another 3-5 excellent machines. And these
> > > machies, for the most part, need to be physically close to each other
> > > because of the interplay of the database, tile creation and the applet.
> > > 
> > > The type of bandwidth we're using is huge. The tile server ships a lot
> > > of data around, as does www. Commercial hosting would probably run in
> > > to hundreds of pounds a month.
> > 
> > I think you'll have more luck with offers if you can provide hard
> > figures.
> 
> tile does about 50 Gb a month, from looking at it's logs. www is harder
> to estimate but it'd be similar. That's what they're doing today, it's
> increasing with time and I'd guess that if it suddenly becomes more
> usable then usage will also go up.

50GB a month is very little in the US: That type of bandwidth can be
bought for cheap. I'm currently paying $100/month for a dedicated server
with 1000GB/month bandwidth, just for comparison, and that's with a dedicated
server inluded, so presumably at least as good for colo.

In my experience, bandwidth in Europe and the UK seems to be more
expensive. I know that OSM is a mostly UK project, but maybe a US based
host could provide more bang for the buck, even with slightly higher
ping times or whatever. I'm not sure that bandwidth is the issue here,
of course, but if "50GB" is a lot in the current setup, I think the
current setup might not be optimal.

(Correct me if my assumptions are wrong here.)

Is there any way to get OSM set up as a non-profit organization for tax
purposes? I'd be happy to donate some money in the near future towards a
new equipment drive, but would like it even more if I could write it
down as a tax deduction.

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer