GeoNames Forum

Hi,

Recently I realize your server seems not to respond quite often

What has changed?

--- Ruth

The free servers are overloaded with requests.

http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/2206.page#8958

Thanks Marc,
have changed the service, but still the same.., does donation really help then?

Ruth

Ruth Lang wrote:

Thanks Marc,
have changed the service, but still the same.., does donation really help then?

Ruth

Yes, it really does.

However, for developers, it's smarter to use the geonames data on your own server. This has two effects: your scripts are more reliable and much faster, and you reduce the load on GeoNames.org.

Documentation and libraries, especially for the PHP gorilla, would help this effort...

Ruth
Sponsoring certainly helps and you get some visibility for your project. If you are more egoistic, however, there is also the option of the premium services: http://www.geonames.org/commercial-webservices.html

The goal of this change is to reduce the number of requests. This will take some time till a significant number of users have switched. At the moment it is 1 request on the api domain towards 200000 requests on the ws domain.

As so few users are using it we have temporarily moved the api domain to a development server. This should dramatically improve the availability and response time for the api domain, however the 'astergdem' service has not been installed on this server. If you are using the astergdem service you should wait till we switch back.

Best

Marc