[Freegis-list] VMAP0/TIGER/SRTM30 data via BitTorrent

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

A few of us have been thinking about use of the BitTorrent protocol 
in the geospatial area.  Our conclusion is that it's greatest use is
in distributing large public (free) geospatial datasets.  To that 
end we have setup a modest experiment to see how useful and popular
such a service might be.  

BitTorrent, for those not familiar with it, is a peer-to-peer file
sharing protocol.  It's distinguishing factor is that the "server" can
scale to handle large numbers of clients without a large increase in 
bandwidth by virtue of forcing clients to trade parts of the downloaded
files with each other rather than having to send a full copy of the file
to all clients.

To test out the utility of BitTorrent in this field we have prepared and
"seeded" a few fairly large, and reasonably popular datasets.  These include:

 o TIGER 2004fe: Full Tiger data for the full USA. 
 o VMAP0: All 4 VMAP0 CDs - various vector data for the whole world. 
 o SRTM30+: SRTM derived DEM data at 30 second postings plus Bathymetry data. 

The torrents can be found at:

  http://uo.space.frot.org/?GeodataTorrents

I welcome feedback, suggestions, additions, and even boos and hisses. 

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent