We currently have sponsored update mirrors in Toronto (Xenyth), Miami (ReliableSite) and Los Angeles (ReliableSite). Each of these are 10Gbps servers we manage ourselves. Tempest’s new ownership is withdrawing the sponsorship for the one in London which was already not enough.

Our overall traffic for updates peaks around 40Gbps for the largest releases for quarterly and yearly Android releases. Average usage over a month is below 2Gbps. We shipped Android 16 QPR2 after it was released earlier this month so the next major update will be in March 2026.

We could easily afford to start paying for the Tempest server in London but it lacks IPv6 and has issues with network downtime. We also aren’t interested in paying a company sending us an ultimatum in the holiday season where we have 6 days to start paying or it’s taken down.

For now, we can update our GeoDNS configuration to split Europe between Toronto and Miami combined with using Los Angeles for the rest of Asia. We can afford to pay for update servers in Europe ourselves if needed but sponsors are nice for this to avoid overpaying for bandwidth.

We already planned to start paying for at least 2 powerful dedicated servers to provide our own geocoding service instead of only a proxy (https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation/#hardware). For updates, a lot of providers charge for 10Gbps bandwidth as if it’s used at 100% capacity continuously or just overcharge.