[OpenLayers-Users] Fast WMS base layers

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 01:34:51PM +0000, Jon Blower wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We have created a prototype OpenLayers-based site for marine data
> visualization (http://lovejoy.nerc-essc.ac.uk:8080/ncWMS/godiva2.html).
>  Currently the site suffers from slow loading of the base layers (NASA
> Global Mosaic and the OpenLayers WMS).  Does anyone know of faster WMS
> servers that might serve decent global base layers, or perhaps someone
> has set up a TileCache interface to these servers?

Hm, I'd be surprised by the OpenLayers basic WMS being slow -- tiles are
typically generated in < .2s, which is typically fast enough to not
incur a penalty.

In any case, the TileCache instance behind
http://labs.metacarta.com/wms-c/demo.html has both a Blue Marble layer
and a vmap0 layer, which you can feel free to use. 

However, we don't have access to landsat data at the moment (NASA
blocked our server due to too many hits: the blue marble stuff is served
graciously by Telascience), so we can't TileCache the landsat data.

You should be able to set up your own local TileCache instance with this
data in it on your server: setting it up should be as simple as copying
the OpenLayers URL into a tilecache.cfg and changing the location of the
URL. 

If you need more help with that, please feel free to respond, and we can
work it out in more details.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta