What would cause site's bandwidth increase?

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chakkaradeep

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Topic # 59555 6-Apr-2010 21:50

For the past 2 months, my blog is exceeding the allocated bandwidth(30,000 MB) and I am unable to find out why! I have prevented hotlinking images using the IIRF filter this month.

I thought I could get some advice from the experts here on what should I look for more to find out
what is causing me exceed my allocated bandwidth. Is there anything specific I need to look on? I have checked the logs/bandwidth reports, but unable to get anything out of it :(

Thanks

Regards,
Chaks

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itxtme

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Reply # 315541 6-Apr-2010 22:26

What control panel have you got? If its Cpanel based you should be able to see exactly where your bandwidth is going. You need to compare the previous month to when the increased bandwidth came.. Given the bandwidth it may take time, but all of the info is there!

Also do you host other people? Files?

Oncop53

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Reply # 315551 6-Apr-2010 22:39

Wow thats a lot of traffic, has the number of views increased substantially? I think wordpress does gzip by default so you wont be able to optimise there.

If you think huge images are taking you over the limt you coud Smush them. (I cant link to the direct URL because geekzone says it has a bad word in it Smush.it

Lurch

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Reply # 315554 6-Apr-2010 22:44

Would check your webstats, also there are quite afew good caching plugins for wordpress that will help.

Would also change your theme to one with less graphics that also helps.

I use webstats on my server so I can see the hits etc, see if your provider/host has something along those lines or as mentioned through cpanel.

Wordpress also has afew plugins that do a similar thing, just have a quick search under plugins on the wp admin page.

Lurch

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Reply # 315559 6-Apr-2010 22:49

StatCounter - Free Real Time Visitor Stats - Plugin does the following -

Invisible Counter Option
Configurable Counter
Configurable Summary Stats
Magnify User
Drill Down
Popular Pages
Entry Pages
Exit Pages
Came From
Keyword Analysis
Recent Keyword Activity
Search Engine Wars
Visitor Paths
Visit Length

That may give you a better idea of what is happening.

Hyper Cache - great cache plugin, should reduce the bandwidth total

nate

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Reply # 315562 6-Apr-2010 22:54

Going through your logs is the best bet, it's probably a hotlinked file (so not an image) that's causing your bandwidth to be so high.

kingjj

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Reply # 315578 6-Apr-2010 23:25

Any scripts other than WordPress hosted on your account? Could be a poorly constructed script accessing a file non-local (javascript file etc on another site). As others have mentioned could be a hotlinked image or other file (not hosting 'backed-up' MP3's a?

) or it could be a spider that doesn't conform to robots.txt instructions (have had this once a few years ago, spider was pulling down between 10 and 50 gigs a month crawling the site multiple times per day). Could be numerous things! Check your stats, see if you can get a raw log file and analyze that, it may give you a clearer picture if your bandwidth stats seem off. May also pay to check your email stats (most CP's have a way of looking into this) to see whether a script has been compromised and is being used to send SPAM or used for other malicious intent (although you'd quickly get your hosting cut off for this one). Also, if you've got a bit of time, keep on eye on your "latest visitors" log (as it is called in Cpanel), any files/images/pages getting an un-usual spikes in traffic?

Best case scenario you got /. (SlashDot.org) without realising it!

chakkaradeep

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Reply # 315696 7-Apr-2010 11:11

I totally forgot to tell what blogging software I am using - Its not Wordpress. It is blogengine.net :)

What control panel have you got? If its Cpanel based you should be able to see exactly where your bandwidth is going

I think I have CPanel. I realized last month I had options to see where my bandwidth is going. I am doing that now :)

Also do you host other people? Files?

The images I use are stored in the same server. I have now decided to use hosting services like photobucket for the image.

it's probably a hotlinked file (so not an image) that's causing your bandwidth to be so high

My hosting provider has installed IIRF plugin for IIS and I have set rules for not allowing hotlinked images. Need to check for hotlinked files. Any input on how to block those?

xpd

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Reply # 315711 7-Apr-2010 11:57

Well..thats one way to stop usage... This blog is protected, to view it you must log in. :)

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Reply # 315720 7-Apr-2010 12:16

You have no way to find the source of your traffic? No Google Analytics, no access to log files? Without this basic information is hard to say what is causing it...

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