Got a bandwidth bill from Dialtone today. Let's just say I'm a bit frustrated right now. It loooks like they are charging for gigaBYTES of usage that is actually gigaBITS.

OK, an example. Following numbers aren't real, but follow the pattern of what I saw:

They charged me for 276GB. My logs show only a fraction of the usage, about 35GB. It took me a while to realize it, but they are saying that I usd 276gigaBYTES, while I actually used 276 gigaBITS (35gigaBYTES). Their charts show that they display traffic in bytes, while in reality it is in bits...

And what's more, now they're telling me that from current usage, I'll have 550GB for October!!! There's just no way in HELL!!!

Doesn't all internet hardware count traffic in thousand-bits (kbps)???

Anyone else had this problem???

First thing I'd do is call or email them about it. What did they say?

<snip double-post>

>> Doesn't all internet hardware count traffic in thousand-bits (kbps)???

There isn´t any or at least i don´t know any "internet hardware" which count traffic in thousand-bits. What you mean and saw with dialtone i think are MRTG stats. These is a gui for the SNMP demon which monitor the ports on their router for the traffic usage. MRTG stats only show the bandwidth usage - NOT the real usage like in GB or MB. If they offer you MRTG stats you should see something like "Average IN" and "Average OUT" fot the month. How high is that because then you can calculate the real usage easily.

If they realy charge you per 95% system or per average system and not per GB like i think they write on their page I can suggest you to add a traffic sharper to your server. Set it to for example 1 MBit for incoming and outgoing traffic so you can easily handel ~100-150 GB per month but they can NEVER charge you over 320 GB per month.

Have a nice weekend you all

Originally posted by manuelk
I can suggest you to add a traffic sharper to your server.

Huh? Please elaborate. Traffic sharper? What is it?

Thanks! :)

>> Huh? Please elaborate. Traffic sharper? What is it?

Very good question ;o) Of course i mean a traffic/bandwidth shaper. So you can limit virtually your servers bandwidth.

i have some servers with dialtone and my charts show Average of 105173kilobits in which they are converting to Average GB by dividing by roughly .403 which equals 260975 MB or 260 GB.

Do hosting companies charge by the actual amount of data that flows through a network or the rate at which this data flows?

DialTone actually provides a very detailed explanation of their bandwidth usage charts on the home page of their support site.

The link is towards the bottom under their "Updates and Useful Information" heading.

The top 3 links refer to bandwidth.

The second and third links:
"Understanding Bandwidth Analysis"
and
"Bandwidth Average VS 95th Percentile"
will be the most useful to you. I think they will give a detailed answer to all the questions you've presented about bandwidth there.

I think you will find that their process is accurate and fair, but let me know.

We have also found that they are VERY responsive if you just ticket them.

Dialtone is not a company you want to host with. They tend to rip you off on the long run. I've been with them for over a year. They charged me $900+ for spamming and I didn't even spam.

Anyways, I still have an account with them but I transfered all my files to another dedicated host already. My account is still open, guess they want to charge me some more. But guess what! I'm not paying! :D

There are many problems with Dialtone
1) long contract length which requires writing letter to cancel, and it must done be with 1 month advanced notice
2) you pay last month upfront, which you will never get back, because when you want to move, it's usually due to bad things, then you have to move immediately and no way to give 30 days notice.

I guess bandwidth charges are ways to get the extra $$.

We are using rackshack.net now and are very pleased with their service, their bandwidth limit is 300GB, you may not use that much, but at least that means they will not overbill you, and their support response is fast. with Dialtone, I usually had to call them 3 or more times (with half hour interval) to get a simple reboot done . And if you read the hard drive wipe-out story ( http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11728 ), you know the risk you are taking.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12092


We were with Dialtone internet for about 2 years. They started billing us big traffic usages after a few months.

In one month, they billed us over $700 for traffic, that amounts to more than 250GB of data transfer. However, from our web log, we can only see less than half of that amount. We questioned DI, their billing people forwarded to their VP. Their VP replied the number is big, because of other stuff, such as FTP and mail. But we did't have FTP services, only HTTP. Mail was another source of traffic.

A few months passed by, we keep getting the same big bill, which we could not consolidate with our web logs. We wanted to move out to another provider, but due to the technical complexities, we were slow on doing that. Then we decided to shutdown most of our mail servers for a month. We got the same big bill.

Finally, we got serous and sent an email with a much tougher tone and asked them to provide a detailed traffic log. Their billing people response was immediate: she promised it would not happen again. And we got about $500 back for that month.