Most servers can handle imagemap queries without launching the external imagemap script. This provides for a faster mechanism and decreased server load.
Now you can reference the map file directly in your HTML instead of through the imagemap script, for example:
<A HREF="http://www.yourisp.com/~username/pics/sample.map"> <IMG SRC="/~username/gifs/sample.gif" ISMAP> </A>
instead of:
<A HREF="http://www.yourisp.com/cgi-bin/imagemap/~username/pics/sample.map"> <IMG SRC="/~username/pics/sample.gif" ISMAP> </A>