bandwidth help please

O

odgies

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2006
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4
bandwidth query

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to ask for help, if not please point me in the right direction thanks.

I've just got myself a little website, but it's already nearly used up its bandwidth allocation. I'm a total novice at this stuff and don't even understand most of the terminology, I tried contacting support but when they answered I'd no idea what they were talking about so I'm no wiser. I will post the correspondence below if that helps, but what I was hoping was if somebody could explain in really simple terms what's happening and is there anything I can do to stop it? Sorry if this is a real dumb post...

Cheers,
odgie

Hi John,

Thanks for prompt reply. Sadly I don't understand much of it, I don't know
what apache, ftp or DA are (or a root for that matter), and I have a
seperate e-mail account with another.com so don't use any other one, so it
shouldn't be anything to do with that. Being such a novice, I guess all I
can do is not update my site at all and wait till another month comes
around and see if I get a bandwidth allowance back or something, I'm
completely out of my depth otherwise. (I knew this having a site idea
wouldn't be as easy as it appeared...). Ah well...

Cheers anyway,
odgie :-)


Hello,

Bandwidth is calculated from various means
1) apache traffic (publishing included)
2) ftp trafffic
3) DA traffic (using the DA interface)
4) outgoing email (any email you send, *including spam*).


If the bandwidth you've been sending has gone unusually high, very quickly, it's usually caused by someone spamming while using your account.
This can be caused by insecuire formmailler scripts.

To get a bandwidth breakdown, check your /usr/local/directadmin/data/users/username/bandwidth.tally (if you don't have root, contact the admin)

Thank you,

John
--------------------------------------------------


----- Original Message -----
From: "odgie" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: New Message: User odgies has used up 87.84% of his bandwidth
and 24.2% of his allocated disk space


> Hi, sorry to be a nuisance but I'm new to this website stuff. What does it
> mean I've nearly used my bandwidth? Is that cos I've been busy building my
> site? How do I use up bandwidth, is it by keep loggin on to edit pages and
> republishing? How is bandwidth calculated, is it by calendar month (ie,
> will I get a new allocation for May?). Thanks in advance for reply - sorry
> if these are dumb questions...
>
> Cheers,
> odgie :-)
>
>
>



NEW MESSAGE:
A new message or response with subject:

User odgies has used up 87.84% of his bandwidth and 24.2% of his allocated disk space

has arrived for you to view.
Follow this link to view it:

http://odgie.com:2222/CMD_TICKET?ac...791&type=ticket
 
From the looks of it, having used DA and being in Network Operations for a VERY large organizations for a couple years here's my take.

Bandwith usage is calculated using this formula

TRAFFIC INBOUND + TRAFFIC OUTBOUND = BANDWITH USE

For example:

Say you have a couple 250Mb files on your site, which each get 5 downloads per day ( 3.5Gb per week ), that would equate to 14 Gb per month there.

If you upload 250 Mb per week in files onto your site, that would account for 1Gb per month.

If your buddies sent you loads of e-mails with attachments on them that were large in size, and let's assume they totaled again, 250Mb per week, this again would be 1gb per month.

Again, using the same thing above for OUTBOUND mail @250Mb per week, again this would be 1Gb per month.

If you webiste drew a lot of visitor's you could draw a couple gigs in bandwith, unless you had some large image files or something there. Let's assume for this topic that your site uses 2Gb per month.

So based on those numbers above you would have a theoretical useage of 19Gb this month.


Not to be nosy, how much bandwith does your hosting company provide you with?

From my experience my customers on my server get from 6-10 Gb per month of transfer, and one site is getting around 1500 - 2500 unique visitors per day and they never go over their limit.

I would suspect one of a few things:

1) Your bandwith allocation is too low for what you actually use, and the overages will hit your pocketbook, sometimes pretty hard.

2) The company you aquired hosting from set your limit lower than what you purchaused, this does happen by accident sometimes.

3) Their is somone sending mail from your system in very large numbers, that you are not aware of. This could EASILY be a virus of sorts.

4) When you log into DA you will see this on the top right side of the screen:

Used Max
Disk Space (mb) 4023.8 5000
Bandwidth (gb) 0.7638 11.718

From those numbers, as you can see I used 4.02Gb of disc space this month, and .76 Gb of bandwith this month ( 763.8 Mb ).

If you can copy and paste that info from your host here, we can help you decipher it.


Rob
 
Hi, thanks for that. I only have a very small site - minimum really, just to host a few archive pictures and stuff. The details you requested are as follows:

Disk Space (mb) 12.1 50
Bandwidth (gb) 0.8754 0.9765

It's a new site so I'm in my first month so far. I've bought 50mb of total disc space and 1gb bandwidth (a month I think? - I guess this will all seem like real small-fry...). I don't use the site for any e-mails, I have a seperate account for that. And I don't get many hits so far (about 150) - it's just a fun thing really. Having said that, I wouldn't like it to crash or anything, and I figured my allocations would be adequate. The only thing I can think of is because I've been building the site (and making lots of errors...), I've been editing and uploading photos and republishing quite a lot - but I didn't think at 12mb total it would use it all up - unless I'm calculating wrong, does it just use 12mb every time I republish, or should I be factoring in for something extra?

Many thanks indeed for your reply, it's very much appreciated. I'm trying hard to learn as I go along, but once it gets into jargon I get a bit lost...

Regards,
Odgie :-)
 
50MB and 1Gb of transfer, that's pretty small indeed.

Yes everytime you upload something, view the webpage or any traffic that goes to your domain name in any way does count against that number.

If it was me, I would pay a little more and get some more disc space and bandwith... it never hurts to be on the safe side.

NOTE: As you can see from my nubmers that I posted i keep a lot on my site, realize that my site is only about 150 pages and can actually fit onto a floppy disc. The rest of the space consumed is used by files, and such that i keep up there and know the URL's by heart incase I need to pull them when I am on a remote site, forgot a Cd, or lost something... it's more of an "online archive" for me as well.

Rob
 
Thanks for your help Rob. I think the 50mb aspect will be fine for a good while, I've got over half my archive photos on there and only used 12mb so far (I know enough to keep all my files as small as possible), it's just the bandwidth problem.

I get it that every time I republish I use up 12mb, and sorry to ask another question, but am I right in thinking then that anytime anyone views my site, it uses up another 12mb of bandwidth? If that's the case, if I get my site up to 20mb say, I can only get 50 hits a month? If so I've screwed up royally...

Cheers,
odgie :-)
 
Every time anyone sees one of your images they're downloading it into their own computer. That uses up a lot of what I call data transfer (and others call bandwidth).

You can solve some of your problems by compressing your photos, I only looked at two because I didn't want to hurt your traffic allocation any more, but together the two photos used up over a quarter of a megabyte. Just to look at two photos.

OT: I used to have a 47 Indian. I was young :) .

If I still had it today I could probably sell it and retire :D .

Jeff
 
Hi Jeff, thanks for that. Why don't they just call in 'data transfer' in the first place so it'd be self-explanatory to us newcomers...? :-)

I'm hangin on hopin I'm near the end of the month and I get a new allocation soon. I learnt how to compress photos as I went along, but the early ones will be the biggest, (which of course will be the ones most people check out first...). I didn't know any better than to just leave them like that, but you're right, once I get me allocation back I'll compress them in Photoshop and replace them with smaller versions.

Thanks for all your help.

A '47 Indian...? Jeez, you could retire AND live like a king...

Cheers,
odgie :-)
 
odgies said:
Hi Jeff, thanks for that. Why don't they just call in 'data transfer' in the first place so it'd be self-explanatory to us newcomers...? :-
Click to expand...
I've been arguing that one for years. Data transfer is how much data gets transferred in a period of time, while bandwidth is the capacity of the pipe.
A '47 Indian...? Jeez, you could retire AND live like a king...
Click to expand...
I saw one in a store window in Santa Monica (Calif.) years ago; boy did it bring back memories.

If it had a price tag on it I might have fainted :) .

Jeff
 
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