[OSM-talk] Exceeded API bandwidth limit, now what?

[Michal Migurski]

On Sep 13, 2010, at 11:20 PM, Tom Hughes wrote:

> On 14/09/10 03:01, Michal Migurski wrote:
> 
>> I'm downloading London, in small sections. I just exceeded my API bandwidth limit.
> 
> If you want an entire city please use planet, or a planet extract, rather than downloading from the api.
> 
>> Can anyone tell me what the limit is so I know not to exceed it, and how long I have to wait until I'm allowed back in?
> 
> The limit is not some sort of game where you try and download at exactly the maximum rate allowed - it's a way of cutting off the people who are downloading vastly more than average.
> 
> It basically cuts off the top fraction of a percent of users - the same sort of people that got banned by hand before when they were noticed.


It'd be interesting if the limit was in some way discoverable. I understand that it's not a game, but it would be immensely helpful if the back-off message was advisory rather than punitive. I can imagine this being expressed as HTTP headers that let you know how long to wait until your next request, or how close a client is to being blocked. I can adapt to whatever the current limitations are, but only if they're communicated in a machine-parseable way.

-mike.

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michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
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