Important Announcement - Please Read


P

Pele

Hello MIUI ANDROID users,

Important : As it stands - MIUIANDROID IS SET TO CEASE SERVICE - END OF MARCH 2012.

First of all MIUIANDROID would like to say thank you for your continued support which allows us to provide you with MIUI Roms on a weekly and regular basis.

Over the past year Miui Android has continued to grow at a alarming rate which has resulted in several server changes to cope with the traffic load and so on and im sure many users have witnessed the download speed capping recently due to this. Over the past few months this has been an ongoing debate, as to how we should manage this scenario to meet user demands.

Unfortunately despite the huge demand and downloads we are still finding it difficult to resolve the issue of finding a long term stable server provider which can cope with the traffic, speed and so on, but at the same being time cost effective. As it stands our long term and supportive MIUI Partner, MIUI Czec has kindly offered us mirror access to handle some of the load but even now this is having a traffic effect on them.

Yes the demand is huge! And with MIUI V4 on the way, Gingerbread and ICS will no doubt force us into a dead end - closure.

We do not want to end up operating at a loss also as that would signal immediate closure of MIUIANDROID, and this would affect other MIUI Partner sites.

The MA Staff have had several discussions, but its not time to have a concrete solution and a lasting one.

Alternatives to help fund the servers and even upgrade to VERY high end servers for the long-term : (Note donations or paid services would be very very small amounts - larger amounts would enable us to guarantee a more solid and high end service for the next year or as long as possible) :


Donations Options:

User Donations

OTA Subscriptions - Possible monthly fee, with subscribed users having 4 OTA update per month

More alternatives to follow....


Please feel free to post your thoughts on this critical subject - and considering the user downloads we see on a average basis which is just WOW, i would expect the same on feedback.

Again this is for the end user, and to allow MIUIANDROID to provide the end user with the best possible MIUI Experience. If no final solution is found - then MIUIANDROID would be forced to close its doors.

Many thanks

MIUIANDROID Team
 
I'll donate you (paypal possibly, coz mine device is not supporting damn OTA even with CWM) if you will support Liquid mt and ask about us to xiaomi ;]
 
A sad announcement but it seems nothing will stop it closing, Mark who runs it spends countless hours working on it, and also all his own money, its a lot to ask of one person and although its sad, I can see why.

Good luck to Mark for the future and a big thanks from me, an end user of MIUI.

TrOjAn
 
Sad day hearing this news, but would like to take this opportunity to thank all at MA especially Mark for all the hardwork in keeping us in the loop of such a great rom.
Regards
Trojan666
 
Sad to hear this news, but i think a lot of people have seen it coming. Thanks for your work Mark, i got no idea how a single person can handle this.
 
Deeply saddened to know the state of affairs. Wish I could help. I can only s***est trying to use free services like Multiupload for hosting the files. Since those services earn money by ad revenues (or paid accounts for those who don't want to wait and see ads), they have a sustainable model for monetizing all downloads. That way, it could be a win-win. Please give this a serious thought.

Regards,
Haroon Q. Raja (you guys know me as HQRaja)
 
Bleh, the forum automatically censored s_u_g_g_e_s_t into s***est. This is plain retarded. :\
 
This is really bad news. I don't post much but I use the forum all the time for information. I would like to thank Mark and all the other people involved in bringing us this fantastic rom. Fingers crossed for a solution that will keep this place going.
 
Well only just joined a week ago been really helpful here . S osorry it has come to this but I would also have paid a monthly donation to keep it open

To Mark dont really know you but you must have put alot of effort, time into this project & your family life may have suffered a little for it what ever you decided Good Luck for the future
 
Ive also just joined this site and from the wealth of information, roms and downloads that ive received i think a monthly fee is a small price to pay for the loss of a great site. I would be happy to subscribe anytime. So please please reconsider closing this site and implement a subscription policy if neccesary. Many many thanks for everyones hard work on this site and i hope that it continues.
 
Why not just update the rom every 2 weeks or more? it's not so important to update every week...
 
How about using BitTorrent? So everyone can support, by providing some bandwidth. I dont mind seeding with my root.
Ok OTA is not possible, but there should be no problem getting a ROM on the SD card ...
 
why don't you use file hosting platforms such as rapidshare, upload.to etc to host your roms ??
i dont understand why you dont think of this, there are so many different free hosting services out there!
 
Free file hosts are not used for lots of reasons.
  1. Auto-Updating the links is a pain. You have to push your uploads there, which sometimes can take a long time.
  2. The URLs are ever changing. We can always have a file at a certain link with direct hosting. The changing URLs require manual labor when generating links.
  3. Download speeds. Some free file hosts run at kbps, that is unusable and not favored in our situation.
  4. Closure of accounts. Some file hosts after a big hit of downloads will shut off the hosting.
This all comes down to us needing good quality hosting.
 
Hi,

I am pretty new around here, and just now registered to comment on this:

1. I do understand you do not want to plunge unwarranted amounts of money into a "hobby".

2. I think a donation system will not work. You know, I do think you deserve some money but truth be told, Chances are 5% I'll give you some (just too easy to download aslughtly different ROM from another place), and MAYBE if you survive 5 more years one lucky day I will actually decide to give you 4$, to feel better. But as I do assume most users are like this, you will not survive 5 years...

3. I understand the main problem are downloads? I guess these generate the most traffic. Here I think using BitTorrent, is the way to go. Or asking users to do provide some mirrors. E.g. I have a small dedicated server I use for my mail and e-mail, which still has around 3.5 TiB unused traffic/month . I could start hosting today, and if more than one person does it, the traffic should not be a problem (You only need a clever system to distribute builds then, but in the easiest way, you can set up a master directory, and mirror users can rsync it daily. You should add and publish SHA-1 hashes for the downloads on the webpage then, to prevent malicious mirrors).

4. Also out of interest: How much traffic do you use? For unlimited, uncapped bandwidth my provider would charge me with 6,90EUR/TiB which does not seem so much as 1TiB is a lot of MIUI images. Also this forum seems small enough that it does not really need a really big machine. Maybe if you can give some insight, what really are the costs, it will be easier to make some suggestions
 
1) The website and servers for generating ROMs, along with the domain and forum license are already paid for. Thats tons of money being towards the hobby. Its just that we don't have the resources that dedicated hosting requires.

2) Donations system are sometimes hit and miss. It revolves around the community. $2 monthly from a handful of users might be able to bring dedicating hosting and OTA back.

3) Bittorrent is great for ISOs and stuff, but these ROMs are updated weekly. Would have to be seeded enormously, and then theres not many options for torrents on mobile devices. It just kinda adds unnecessary hurdles in the process.

4) 20TB monthly has been our max. So a 7EURO charge per TB could quickly add up. We basically need an uncapped (GigE/100mbit) provider that won't throttle the downloads.

Hope this answers some questions
 
Hi, I think if the main problem is bandwidth you should seriously consider using torrents (you can just provide the magnet link instead of creating a .torrent) for distribution. However that doesn't mean you only have to have only one form of distribution. You could mix and match the method to the type of audience, for example:
  • Combine all roms in a single folder (users can then pick and choose their model) and distibute that through a single weekly torrent (the community can take care of keep seeding or even re-seed old roms, all you need to have is 5 or 10 initial seeders with big upload capacity for the initial spike)
  • Create a subscription service that enables OTA updates where you'd have to pay a weekly/mothly/yearly ? fee to have access to the OTA system - convenience is a premium!
In taking this two-pronged approach you'll take care of your excessive bandwidth problem (by moving most of it to torrenting) and of your running costs for providing an OTA service. People would still be able to get their fix for free and if they prefer convinence then a small fee imo won't turn them away.

Also the community itself can use various bitlockers themselves to provide http(s) access to the updates (if for some reason someone doesn't want to or can't use torrents or pay for the OTA update).

Anyway I don't have a filehost I can provide, but I would gladly provide my 5mbit upstream for sedding each release.