Email traffic not counted in bandwidth total

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We've got an issue, that I'd like to bring to John's attention.

Over the past 2 months, we've noticed that Email traffic is NOT counted in bandwith totals - at all.

Is there a way to address this so that the customer has an accurate way of determining traffic, and we can bill properly for all the bandwidth they're using? It's becoming a big "issue" very quickly.

Thanks

Joe

PS: I'm going to notify John of this thread.
 
Hi Joe,

DirectAdmin does track and tally all outgoing e-mail, so bulk-mailings and/or large file attachments do count towards the bandwidth limit set by the reseller. So, anyone using your mail system to distribute large amounts of data would be caught quite easily.

Although the receiving end currently isn't tracked, remember that incoming files are still subject to the user's disk quota limits. So, if you create a hosting package with 100 megs of space, the user can't have more than this regardless of the source (incoming by mail, filemanager, etc.).

If incoming tracking is a big concern then we'd like to hear other's opinions in this thread. :)

Mark
 
Since our datacenter (and I imagine most) charge per K incoming and outgoing, I'd sure like to see who's using my BW (that they're not being charged for).

Count me in for "definately would like to see"

Thanks
 
DirectAdmin Sales wrote:
If incoming tracking is a big concern then we'd like to hear other's opinions in this thread.
Click to expand...
Most Data Centers and connectivity providers (including our connectivity provider) charge by what they call 95th-percentile billing; they charge you for 95% of the highest point, either incoming or outgoing traffic.

Since most webhosting companies do a lot more outgoing than they do incoming, the incoming is quite insignificant in determining pricing. So we don't need it and will probably never charge any user for incoming transit.

However if your connectivity comes from an ethernet, DSL, or cable provider (including Metro Ethernet and Local Ethernet) you may be paying for both added together. If that were the case for us, I might be interested, though I probably still wouldn't charge for it to stay competitive.

Jeff
 
Hello all,


Dont think its very usefull. Cant companies make a "charity" to users and at least dont dip into KB's counting?

(i dont need this... unless world will turn around and bw will be like in mobile phone world - 1MB-5$ :D )
 
jlasman said:
DirectAdmin Sales wrote:

Most Data Centers and connectivity providers (including our connectivity provider) charge by what they call 95th-percentile billing; they charge you for 95% of the highest point, either incoming or outgoing traffic.

Since most webhosting companies do a lot more outgoing than they do incoming, the incoming is quite insignificant in determining pricing. So we don't need it and will probably never charge any user for incoming transit.

However if your connectivity comes from an ethernet, DSL, or cable provider (including Metro Ethernet and Local Ethernet) you may be paying for both added together. If that were the case for us, I might be interested, though I probably still wouldn't charge for it to stay competitive.

Jeff
Click to expand...
Actually many datacenters charge an actual total of incoming and outgoing. I would agree that most datacenters USED to charge 95th percentile. But I think that it's pretty clear that the trend is to charge for what the user uses. This usually works out much better for the customer anyway unless your usage graph doesn't vary much.

Anyway my point is that if the question here is whether to include all bandwidth used in the tally then it seems obvious that the server should report all bandwidth. Mainly because an end user sees the bandwidth and just assumes that that is what they should be charged for. It's much more difficult to explain to a customer that the number they see in their panel isn't really accurate and you need to charge them more then it is to say that it isn't accurate and you're going to charge them less... imho
 
motobrandt said:
Actually many datacenters charge an actual total of incoming and outgoing. I would agree that most datacenters USED to charge 95th percentile. But I think that it's pretty clear that the trend is to charge for what the user uses. This usually works out much better for the customer anyway unless your usage graph doesn't vary much.
Click to expand...

Most any data center that's adding up traffic in both directions is ripping you off, because the major carriers all run full duplex pipes that carry full bandwidth in both directions at the same time. As I posted originally, the exception would be some (not all) ethernet providers. Cox, in Orange County, California, for exmple.

ISPs have taken advantage of this for years; the reason many of them went into the hosting business was because most of their bandwidth is incoming, as their customers download websites, so the outgoing bandwidth is essentially free.

Really.

Provably.

Jeff
 
Well I happen to think 95 percentile is a ripoff since you pay on projected usage rather then actual usage and to benefit will need a very flat line type of usage.

I would also say well over 50% of datacentres that charge for gigabytes used tend to charge not using 95 percentile now so saying that webhosting companies have incoming bw freely available is far fetched in my view.

On the topic itself, yes I think email traffic like all other traffic should count to quota, if some providers dont want this then maybe it can be made optional in directadmin.
 
Chrysalis, if you could explain how 95th Percentile billing has anything to do with projected usage, I, and probably a few hundred thousand other administrators, would like to know about it.

Of course if you think it's a ripoff, then you probably wouldn't want to use a data center that offered only that option.

I've checked, and our provider offers several billing options, none of which charge separately for billing in one direction, all of which charge based on the highest bandwidth in either direction.

As far as what we charge for our dedicated server and colocation clients, we don't charge anything for bandwidth at all, though we do cap bandwidth at 100 mbps per server. What we charge for is how much outgoing data you actually transfer, over 250 Gigabytes of data per month.

Note that I never wrote that anyone else shouldn't want to know about incoming data tracking; I merely responded to Mark's question, and then to other questions and concerns raised.

Jeff
 
Well I have servers at 12 different datacentres, all 12 charge per gigabyte transferred, 2 of them give free incoming the other 10 charge incoming+out.

Concerning 95th percentile perhaps projected isnt accurate but I dont like to use the term actual usage because it is wrong for 95th.

95th works on the basis that it looks at your peak usage and then takes of the top 5% of readings and will charge you for that amount for the entire month, so for example if you daily backups which gives you a load of peaks on a monthly graph then your peak reading will be higher, if your backup time exceeds 5% of the monthly time then you would pay for that bandwidth as if you were using it for the entire month. In simple terms you might have a peak usage of 36mbit, with top 5% knocked of it may suddenly be 21mbit and you would be billed at 21mbit for the month but your average might only be 15mbit so in that case you would pay for 6mbit of traffic unused. Of course there is times when 95th will save you money but I think it is rare 95th will give you lower bandwidth usage then actual.

But back on topic, I think you must agree that some people will be paying for ALL their bandwidth and as such may want to include emails into the quota.
 
Chrysalis said:
Well I have servers at 12 different datacentres, all 12 charge per gigabyte transferred, 2 of them give free incoming the other 10 charge incoming+out.
Click to expand...
Which makes the two of them similar to what we do. I stand behind my argument that the actual tier one carriers (everyone eventually gets carried by a tier one carrier, the difference is in how many resellers and peering points are in between) are almost universally using T-1, OC-3, etc., and those lines are full-duplex. The tier one carriers charge for the most data used in either direction and the other direction gets the free ride.
Concerning 95th percentile perhaps projected isnt accurate but I dont like to use the term actual usage because it is wrong for 95th.

95th works on the basis that it looks at your peak usage and then takes of the top 5% of readings and will charge you for that amount for the entire month, so for example if you daily backups which gives you a load of peaks on a monthly graph then your peak reading will be higher, if your backup time exceeds 5% of the monthly time then you would pay for that bandwidth as if you were using it for the entire month.
Click to expand...
I believe you're misinterpreting the impact of the measurement, as you can certainly control your usage for backup. For years we managed backups by backing up only during periods of low client use, so we never paid extra for backups at all.

Now we're beginning to backup on a private address space network built in our data center specifically for that purpose. When this is finished almost 100% of our backups will be done through our own switch and not through the data center routers at all. Which means Level 3 will never even see our backup bandwidth.
In simple terms you might have a peak usage of 36mbit, with top 5% knocked of it may suddenly be 21mbit and you would be billed at 21mbit for the month but your average might only be 15mbit so in that case you would pay for 6mbit of traffic unused. Of course there is times when 95th will save you money but I think it is rare 95th will give you lower bandwidth usage then actual.
Click to expand...
And in those cases you just go ahead and contract for average billing. The carriers generally offer the choice.

And based on our own experience I'd say that most data centers probably have enough use spread through the day that their averages stay fairly constant. We find that 95th percentile billing works for us.
But back on topic, I think you must agree that some people will be paying for ALL their bandwidth and as such may want to include emails into the quota.
Click to expand...
Actually I did. Read my first post and my most previous post :) .

Jeff
 
Yeah glad you agree on the key issue then :)

I know they all full duplex as well :) and tier 1 providers will charge 95th when buying transit direct from them its just I buy my bandwidth from the datacentre so get billed differently.
 
Hello,

I have some clients that only use it for incoming mail (no website), not using my mailserver for outgoing mail. So i can't see what they are using for incoming mail and if they are not using to much bandwith. Isn't it possible to measure the bandwith while the user is downloading the mail, or does this ask to much capacity of the server?

Kin regards,

Martijn
 
Was this ever "fixed" or does it still not count incoming emails? My data centre is saying I’m using about 3x as much bandwidth as DA is reporting and I have no way of telling what user it's coming from.
 
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