Hate to be a stickler, but if the auto-download is crashing the server, why not zip up all the maps and provide a download link so all clients have all the maps the server uses installed on thier machine? I know that there's the issue of re-downloading maps that are already there, but it'd probably be better to furnish the maps outside of the game, which might, *might* reduce the amount of server crashes.
Btw, sorry if I crashed it, cause I tried to join tonight and it zonked out in the middle of the map download, and the server was no longer in the list....