Bandwidth? HUH?

[SpeedJenkyz]

OK I just received a notice I have reached 80% of my allowed bandwidth.....what does this mean? If this is bad how do I minimize usage and/or get more room?


SJ

[Floris]

Monthly bandwidth and monthly traffic are usually the same.
Quota or hdd space is something else. Just to clarify this.

Each time you host a file and someone downloads it, you create traffic, this traffic gets deducted from your monthly counter. Your account has a certain amount of 'free' traffic. Going over this (depending which Hosting provider you use) could mean you get suspended until the new month, or charged for the extra traffic.

It sounds like your site is growing and you need to get a bigger account with more monthly 'bandwidth'.

Personally I think the term bandwidth has nothing to do with the traffic. Since bandwidth implies the connection speed for your site, and not the traffic that goes over it. But ok, it's a term used by many providers.

What hosting plan are you on now? shared hosting? a vps? a dedicated server?
And how much traffic (or bandwidth) do they offer for your account? 2gb/ 20gb/ 200gb/ ?

[kentaurus]

your site is getting popular more visits = more traffic, and you'll probably need more bandwidth (semantics apart)

a lot of hosts just charge for the extra bandwidth at a fixed price, ask yours, they will probably charge you an extra per gigabyte transfered. Or you may need to upgrade your plan.

If bandwidth is an issue you could try:
1) disabling attachments (depending on the amount you have)
2) enabling gzip compression for your pages (at the admincp) might help
3) store css as files... as they get in the browser cache
4) if you are sending no-cache headers.. disable that

(closing the forum completely is also very effective, but I don't think that's in any case an option )

[SpeedJenkyz]

Hi

Thanks for the reply, I get 200 a month but I assumed that was more than plenty since I havent seen anymore advertised for purchase. I have a buddy hosting me for free, not sure what the name of it is called. How much does this extra BW usually cost?


SJ

[Floris]

These are all questions we don't know. We're not your host. Contact your buddy please for hosting support, or compare it against other hosts with the same packages. Such as steadfast.net, softlayer.com, theplanet.com, staminus.net, etc

[SpeedJenkyz]

O nobody can tell me what they usually pay for extra BW? Im not asking how much mine cost, obviously you wouldn't know that

[Floris]

I don't pay for extra bandwidth. I use accounts that don't go over the monthly limits.

[steven s]

O nobody can tell me what they usually pay for extra BW? Im not asking how much mine cost, obviously you wouldn't know that

Costs vary from host to host.
My site was consuming a lot of bandwidth do to search engine bots.
When MSN starting indexing sites they caused my site to exceed my bandwidth allotment. I now just ban MSN bots. I also found a Russian website sucking up bandwidth. No idea what they were doing. I banned their ip address. Eventually I did need to change hosting plans for more bandwidth.

My current host is anywhere from $0.50US to $1.25US/Gb per month depending on hosting plan.

[SpeedJenkyz]

how can I tell what is soaking up bandwidth?

[Jose Amaral Rego]

Do you not have AWstats or simular installed by your host?

[SpeedJenkyz]

huh? My site is down now because of this crap!!! urggh


www.speedjunkyz.info/forums

[steven s]

huh? My site is down now because of this crap!!! urggh


www.speedjunkyz.info/forums

Before you said you have 200.
What does that mean? 200 Mb of bandwidth?

[SpeedJenkyz]

Well it is back now and it now has 400, my host added more YAAY!

SJ

[yogesh]

You have 400mb of bandwidth a month?

If that is true then you should switch hosts ASAP!

[Dilly]

Agreed. 400Mb is nothing. We use upwards of 60Gb, and we don't even allow attachments.