Excessive Traffic

[markhendo1986]

Hi there,

I'm hoping you guys can help me out with this issue I've been having for at least a year now.

My site is: http://www.champman0102.co.uk/forum/index.php and although we are not a massive site, we do get a lot of regular visitors but I don't understand why we keep going over the allowed traffic on the server per month.

I'm currently on a 40MB traffic which you'd think is more than enough, right? But the last billing I received charged me ?159.80 for... wait for it... 140,367 MB worth of traffic!

How on earth does one site accumulate so much traffic?!

Any suggestions/modifications to help me sort this out for the future would be much appreciated.

Thank you,
Mark.

[COBRAws]

Maybe you server is hacked, maybe you have big files being downloaded because they were crawled by google or any other search engine.

Do you have any stats analyzer on your website control panel? The panel provided by your host. If you have WHM/Cpanel you can use Webalizer for example, that lists you traffic data like the most downloaded/accessed files and how much bandwidth they used.

If you need more info just post it here and others or me will try to help you out :)

[TNCclubman]

40MB is nothing.

[COBRAws]

40MB is nothing.
I understanded that his traffic was 140,367 MB and his plan is for 40mb. My wrong.

[TNCclubman]

40MB a month will get burned thorugh in less than a day for a website running vBulletin.

[Lynne]

40MB a month? That doesn't seem right. But, besides that, do your access_logs have anything interesting to say (if you don't know where they are, ask your host)? Do you have a page to watch what is going on with apache at any given point? Take a look at that and see what is up.

40MB a month will get burned thorugh in less than a day for a website running vBulletin.
Some sites wouldn't even survive an hour. :cool:

[markhendo1986]

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses.

40MB is a type. Oops! Should be 40GB, that would be more appropriate?

I found a table that showed that the shoutbox I'd been using had been using up over 50% of our allowed traffic. For now, I've uninstalled the shoutbox which is a massive shame as it is very popular with members, but vbShout just doesn't seem to be very server-friendly!

[Dygear]

Change your host / plan to something more appropriate for your sites needs.

[Princeton]

get rid of the shoutbox - it's always my first recommendation :up:
now, your members will post more frequently in your forum

[eddied316]

Well, every hit you receive - every image, has to be downloaded (that's bandwidth)

plus attachments, etc

Everything adds up, 40GB does seem pretty high. My host gives me 3TB of bandwidth, and 300GB of space. And its pretty cheap.

I would switch hosts.

[Dismounted]

My host gives me 3TB of bandwidth, and 300GB of space. And its pretty cheap.
One thing to be careful of is over-inflated plan specifications, i.e. overselling.

[R.o.o.t]

Chang you company and you host plan ..
GOOD LUCK

[Angel-Wings]

Do you checked your access log with an analyzer like Webanalyzer what is causing the most traffic ?
Also, do you send a lot of mails, big attachments that are loaded often - all this may be a problem, each one maybe just small, just count them together.
Maybe doing this before switching the host

[markhendo1986]

Thanks for all the responses thus far, people. Much appreciated.

I am now looking to switch hosts once again, but ensuring this time that a prospective host could handle traffic of around the amount that we experienced last month (which was 140,367 MB).

Could any of you offer any sound advice on this matter? I am reluctant to make the same mistake as before, moving to a new host only to be charged excessively anyway!

[Carnage]

That traffic seems rather excessive... how many active/online users do you have at once?

You might try a step up from shared hosting maybe a VPS or entry level dedicated. They usually come with more than enough bandwidth to cover your 140GB a month.

[Wonksta]

Looks like a very active forum you have just a tad over 2,000 members with over 40,000 posts. this indicates that your members are rather active. I have an extremely active forum only 4 months old but we've just hit 104X members approaching 40,000 posts. We are doing 2.6Gigs per day (on a good day) with an average of 1.9Gig per day!

So it is very normal because if you look at it from a page views perspective we are getting like 50,000 page views each month and climbing (that is a lot of data being fetched from the server!)

Congratulations on a successful and I assume active forum from what you've stated.

[deadlySniper]

Check through your databases, someone might of hacked your Server, and they could be using your host, under your name. But without you knowing.