OpenStreetMap
I wonder if it is just me or if other people are affected, too. Since several weeks I get no or only very slow responses when I try to open the Openstreetmap from the website openstreetmap.org or from informationfreeway.org. What is the reason for this failure? I guess it is some kind of too heavy demand or some disk failure. What is more strange is that there is nowhere any notice that these services are currently unavailable, what is being down to restore service or any other useful hint. I find this troubling.
Perhaps it is just me. On the mailing list no one else seems to care, as I did not see any complaints about this problem. Also, if this is only a hardware matter, why is the necessary hardware not just bought? I have heard that the necessary funds are available. If the funds are not available, why is there not some banner or fundraising effort advertised prominently on the main page. What about partnerships? Is there no company or organization or university who would temporarily help out with hosting agreements or servers?
I had an exchange on the mailing list with another prominent community member where I expressed my wish for OSM to become more professional.
The reply was that "is is not also nice for OSM to stay an amateur project" or something similar. Well, if the Openstreetmap is not available because of amateurishness, I would say I would prefer a more professional organization. It might or might not be true that OSM is not a map provider, but when one of the main motivations of contributing to OSM is to see the map progress, then not be able to check the map is frustrating and might drive potential contributors away - because we don't have something to show for. This post is not meant as a critique to anybody. But I would like to get some answers. Or perhaps I am the only one who thinks so, than maybe it is better to ignore this post. And - no - I do not think "if you want something fixed, do it yourself" is an adequate answer in this case, because it is not my decision to place a fundraising banner on the main page, or contact other organizations in the name of OSM to get help.
Thank you,
Longbow4u
Discussion
Comment from Skywave on 23 October 2008 at 23:27
Although the past few days there were some server troubles, i had no problems accessing the maps the past weeks. Have you tried rebooting your modem (they get slow after a very long uptime), maybe a firewall is blocking something, tried OSM on a different computer. Does the cyclemap work normally for you? Because the cyclemap are on a totally different server (cloudmade).
Comment from POHB on 24 October 2008 at 10:10
I've started to have problems getting the map tiles on my home PC, but it is working fine on a laptop connected to the same router. I wonder if a MS security update has broken something? I sometimes get problems with Google maps too, but not so often. It's the same on IE and Firefox, so I don't think it is a browser problem. I've tried disabling the PC firewall and messing with the MTU settings to no avail. Also tried looking at network traces but all I see are the http requests going out for the images but no replies. Anyone else seen and solved the same problem?
Comment from shonkylogic on 21 June 2009 at 03:04
I've been having this issue too for the past few days. No response from the tile servers on Firefox or IE from home, but works ok if I route via a proxy server.
I notice that if a tile request is waiting in the background then everything else slows down too (e.g. google searches).
Comment from shonkylogic on 21 June 2009 at 04:07
Hmm... I just upgraded the firmware in my Billion router. Either that, or just the restart, seems to have fixed the issue.