BRouter Routing Data Builder

This Docker image allows to build the routing data files (.rd5) for BRouter.

Requirements

At least 250 GiB of free disk space is required to build the routing data for the whole world.

At least 8 GiB of RAM is required to build the routing data for the whole world, at least 16 GiB is recommended.

Building Routing Data

Building the routing data for the first time consists of four steps:

1. Pull the Docker image
2. Download a planet file
3. Download SRTM data
4. Build the routing data

For all subsequent builds running the last step is sufficient, as the planet data is updated automatically to the latest version in the build process and SRTM data doesn't change at all.

Pull the Docker image

docker pull mjaschen/brouter-routingdata-builder

or

docker pull ghcr.io/mjaschen/brouter-routingdata-builder

Downloading a Planet File

Planet OSM is the canonical source of planet files for the whole world. For building global routing data, download the Latest Weekly Planet File in PBF format. Warning: the planet file has a size of roughly 75 GiB (May 2024).

For smaller regions and/or testing purposes, a smaller extract of the planet can be used, e.g. for Europe, a single country or an even smaller region. Geofabrik offers extracts for all regions and countries. Download a file in .osm.pbf format.

Another option for getting custom planet files, especially for very small extracts (town and city level, smaller regions) is the BBBike Extract Service. Choose “Protocolbuffer (PBF)” as export format.

Store the downloaded planet file into a directory on the host system.

Downloading SRTM Elevation Data

SRTM data can be downloaded here: http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/srtmdata/

Just select the wanted tiles and put them into a directory. Needed format:

• Tile size: 5 deg x 5 deg
• Format: “Esri ASCII”

It's also possible to download the whole set at https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_J08t5spvd8RWRmYmtFa2puZEE&usp=drive_web#list. Unpack the archive and mount the directory SRTMv4.1/5_5x5_ascii into the container.

Building the Routing Data

docker run --rm \
    --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
    --env PLANET=slovenia-latest.osm.pbf \
    --env JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx2048M -Xms2048M -Xmn256M" \
    --volume /tank/brouter/tmp:/brouter-tmp \
    --volume /tank/brouter/planet:/planet \
    --volume /tank/brouter/srtm:/srtm:ro \
    --volume /tank/brouter/segments:/segments \
    ghcr.io/mjaschen/brouter-routingdata-builder

Let's take a closer look on what happens here:

• --rm delete the container after the processing is done
• --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)": the processing script can and should be run as a non-privileged user, the user ID and group ID for that user can be provided with the --user option; in the example the current user ID and its primary group ID is used. Ensure that the mounted directories (tmp, planet, segments) are writable by the given user.
• --env PLANET=slovenia-latest.osm.pbf: the downloaded planet file is located in /tank/brouter/planet/ (see the step further down where that directory is mounted into the container) and its name is slovenia-latest.osm.pbf (important: the planet file must be located in the directory which is mounted at /planet in the container; that means for this example that /tank/brouter/planet/slovenia-latest.osm.pbf must exist)
• --env JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx2048M -Xms2048M -Xmn256M": the memory related options for the Java VM should be set according to the specs of the docker container; the example shows values for smaller planet files – when processing larger regions (europe, world, …) the memory requirements are higher (the default value is -Xmx6144M -Xms6144M -Xmn256M)
• --volume /tank/brouter/tmp:/brouter-tmp: the process of creating the routing data uses a lot of temporary files which are written in this mounted directory
• --volume /tank/brouter/planet:/planet: the directory where the planet file is located; write access is needed because the planet file will be updated by the processing script before the routing data is created
• --volume /tank/brouter/srtm:/srtm:ro: the directory where the SRTM data is located, either in zipped ASCII format (*.zip) or in BEF (*.bef) format; it's mounted read-only as there are no changes applied to the SRTM data
• --volume /tank/brouter/segments:/segments: that's the target directory where the created routing data files (.rd5) will be stored

If updating the planet file isn't desired, just provide --env PLANET_UPDATE=0 as option. In this case the directory which contains the planet file can be mounted read-only.

Benchmarks

Planet

Updating the planet file and building routing data for the whole world takes several hours depending on the available system ressources:

Build Time	CPU	RAM	Disk	OS	Remarks
3:45 h	Xeon E3-1270 v3 @ 3.50GHz (8 cores)	32 GiB	4x HGST HUH721010ALE600 10 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx15360M -Xms15360M -Xmn512M
2:49 h	AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16 cores)	128 GiB	2x SAMSUNG MZQLB3T8HALS-00007 4 TB NVME, RAID 1	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx30720M -Xms30720M -Xmn1024M"
3:33 h	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores)	64 GiB	4x TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY 16 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx6G -Xms6G"
3:26 h	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores)	64 GiB	4x TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY 16 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx8G -Xms8G"
3:20 h	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores)	64 GiB	4x TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY 16 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx9G -Xms9G"
3:21 h	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores)	64 GiB	4x TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY 16 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx10G -Xms10G"
3:21 h	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores)	64 GiB	4x TOSHIBA MG08ACA16TEY 16 TB, ZFS RAID-Z	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx20G -Xms20G"
4:58 h - 5:13 h	Ampere Altra (16 shared ARM cores, Hetzner CAX41)	32 GiB	shared NVMe	Linux	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx16G -Xms16G"
3:56 h	Apple Silicon M1 Max (10 cores)	64 GiB	Apple NVMe	macOS 14	JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx20G -Xms20G"

It seems that no more than 10 GB of heap memory is required to create routing data for the whole planet in a minimum of time.

Extracts/Regions

Region	Build Time	Machine	CPU	RAM	Disk	OS	Remarks
Germany	10:05 min	Apple Mac Studio 2022	Apple M1 Max (10 cores)	64 GiB	Apple NVMe	macOS 14	JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx20G -Xms20G, skipped planet file update

Development

Building the Docker Image

docker build --pull -t brouter-routingdata-builder .

The image is built automatically with Github Actions when either a tag or the main branch is pushed. After a successful build the image is deployed to Github Container Registry and Docker Hub.