> Because I don't have a static IP address through my Internet Service Provider, I needed to use a Dynamic Domain Name Service client, which updates my DNS records to point at the current IP address of my router.

I'm guessing that your router is available through the Internet directly, then? I wonder in how many places that's the case, because it isn't in my country (Latvia) and for my ISP (LMT, wireless connection in the countryside), because it seems like they're using CGNAT or something and any inbound traffic ended up getting dropped, at least the last time I tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT

What I eventually did was rent a few cheap VPSes and set up WireGuard on them, so that my homelab servers could be accessed through the VPSes. I wrote a vague tutorial on my blog (though I should add the disclaimer that you probably don't want to forward almost all the ports if you're not lazy): https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/how-to-publicly-access-you...

Either way, this seems like a cool project!

> Even on this smaller extract, these services already use a large portion of my 1TB SSD (667 GB total). Assuming the usage scales proportionally, I would need around 3.7TB of storage for the entire planet. Not to mention the RAM requirements also scaling.

Though I can't help but to wonder why it wouldn't be possible to decrease the maximum level of detail that the map files contain, like the levels that you can zoom in or out. Even in the demo environment you get the lowest level of detail (land contours) for the whole world, even if you only have a part of it available in the higher fidelity.

> DigitalOcean Droplet (Memory Optimized): Total - $832.00 / mo

> AWS r6a.4xlarge EC2 Instance: Total - $735.42 / mo

> Azure D32as v5 VM Instance: Total - $1127.36 / mo

As for the cost aspect, someone suggested Hetzner, which does both cloud VPSes and dedicated ones: https://www.hetzner.com/

Example of Hetzner VPS with 32 vCPU cores, 128 GB of RAM (CCX51, dedicated vCPU): 353.31 Euros a month + storage costs (600 GB by default)
Example of Hetzner dedicated server with 16 CPU cores, 128 GB of RAM (from auction, not guaranteed): 46.05 Euros a month + storage costs (2 TB by default)

Then there's Contabo, which also has prices that are generally on the more affordable side: https://contabo.com/en/

Example of Contabo VDS with 12 CPU cores, 96 GB of RAM (Cloud VDS XXL): 149.99 Euros a month + storage costs (720 GB by default)
Example of Contabo dedicated server with 20 CPU cores, 256 GB of RAM (Intel Dual 10-Core): 149.44 Euros a month + storage costs (depends)

Apart from that, some people might also suggest that you look at https://lowendbox.com/ or similar sites for good deals, though typically the focus of such sites won't be on beefier specs.

Depending on exactly how many resources you need, a smaller piece of hardware might be suitable. There can sometimes be regional providers, for example I use Time4VPS for most of my hosting: https://www.time4vps.com/?affid=5294 (affiliate link, feel free to remove affid; though they to have a sale going on now)

Apart from all that, I wonder why we don't have a "champion" project here that does pretty much everything in a single offering. Like for mail servers there's Mail-In-a-Box, for file storage there's Nextcloud (though some prefer Seafile). Such offerings are seldom ideal for all use cases, but are good for mass adoption.