What would cause site's bandwidth increase?

Forums › Off topic › What would cause site's bandwidth increase?

chakkaradeep

799 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#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

Desktop : Intel Quad Core Q9400 2.66GHz - 8GB RAM - 500 GB + 500 GB HDD - NVidia GeForce 9800GT - LG246WH Flatron Display - Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V
Virtual Machine : Powered by Hyper-V and VMWare Workstation
Laptop: HP dv7-3004TX Entertainment Notebook PC | HP Touchsmart tx2 1119au - Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Mac: iMac 21.5" Snow Leopard
Mobile : iPhone 3GS

itxtme

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#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

273 posts

Ultimate Geek

#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

1061 posts

Uber Geek

#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

1061 posts

Uber Geek

#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

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#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

1728 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#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

799 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#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?

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
13765 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#315711 7-Apr-2010 11:57

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

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

LinkTree

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79253 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#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...