OK, my site has been up and running with Below10host (http://www.below10host.com) for over a year now. In that time, my site has never used more than 400MB bandwidth per month, by either cpanel's reporting or Webalizer's reported number. This is out of my hosting plan's maximum 3GB. The bussiest part of my website is easilly the forums. For my site's first birthday, I decided that it was time to switch our forum software from YaBB (perl/flat text files) to phpBB (PHP/mySQL). At the same time, I took the forums off their former subdomain and just put them at /forums.

That was at the beginning of this month.

Today I went to my site (after being away for a few days) only to find the dreaded "this site has exceeded its maximum bandwidth".:eek:

I send off an e-mail to my host telling them to upgrade my account to 5GB/month to get my site back up and running. When it's back, I go check cpanel. Right now, cpanel's bandwidth monitor says my site has used 3177MB this month, or about 3.1GB. I guess that explains why they shut my site off, but how the hell did I suddenly jump to ten times what my previous bandwidth had been? Switching forum software doesn't account for a 10x increase in bandwidth usage. But here's the kicker: webalizer says I have used up 317289K B! 0.3GB! That's right where I would normally expect it to be!

So WTF happened to me? I can think of three possibilities:

1) Cpanel (and my host) wasn't logging bandwidth usage for my subdomains. Seems reasonable that they were only logging www.arsanime.com and not forums.arsanime.com. Error in my favor all this time that we were on a subdomain?

2) Cpanel (and my host) wasn't logging bandwidth for CGI files. Doesn't seem too likely, though.

3) Cpanel (and my host) is suddenly charging me for bandwidth used by database queries! Outrageous, since the database is on localhost, but I searched around here and found another post mentioning something like this. This also seems to be the most likely explanation since Webalizer is reporting my that my (actual?) bandwidth usage is about the same as it's always been!:angry:

So what am I to do? Have I really been using far more bandwidth than I'd realized all this time? Or am I getting charged unfairly?:mad:

In any case, this brings me quite a bit closer to moving to a new host, as I've been thinking about it for a while now.

Is webalizer also reporting about 3177MB used so far, or just CPanel?

But here's the kicker: webalizer says I have used up 317289K B! 0.3GB! That's right where I would normally expect it to be!

Webalizer reported no change in his bandwidth. Maybe CPanel screwed up?

Oops I missed that.

If webalizer is reporting much less (e.g. 0.3GB), it should be a simple matter of contacting your host and telling them this. There is no reason why they would not be able to sort it out.

I believe that cpanel just recently started tracking bandwidth on subdomains didnt it?

-Brendan

I don't think any host in their right mind would allow a control panel that doesn't track all forms of bandwidth.

Besides - the host would notice such a large discrepancy over a year. So I'd say this is just a screw up with CPanel.

I don't think we could ever take the diskspace or bandwidth reporting features of WHM/CPanel seriously. I would certainly look closely at the regular copies we take of webalyzer and WHM stats on various domains, before accepting any overage charges from our provider for this setup. We've seen some pretty silly results recently, and it's quite embaressing when a client emails to ask why their site is down when it's obvious they have used nowhere near what's being reported.

Cheers

Gary

cpanel also tracks email, ftp along with httpd which may result in higher bandwidth usage

webalizer only tracks httpd, and its not to reliable

Actually, YaBB might be the problem. What were you using before?

Take a look at this (Read the last reply in this thread): http://yeswebmasterforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59

YaBB is what he was using originally, then he switched to phpBB.

YaBB is what he was using originally, then he switched to phpBB.

For my site's first birthday, I decided that it was time to switch our forum software from YaBB (perl/flat text files) to phpBB (PHP/mySQL).

I guess I better read more carefully!

My bad,

Originally posted by yeswebmaster
Actually, YaBB might be the problem. What were you using before?

Take a look at this (Read the last reply in this thread): http://yeswebmasterforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59

You are right...YaBB is a heavy user of resources, but I don't think this is the reason Cpanel did not show the correct bandwidth usage.

I feel very confident that choice #1 is the reason. Cpanel was set up so that the bandwidth usage of subdomains is tracked separately from the main domain. I haven't checked into it recently, but Nick may have changed it so that the byteslog of the entire domain is taken in sum. In the past, sub-domains had their own byteslog, thus only showing bandwidth usage of the main domain.

This is from a conversation with a more knowledgeable person than myself regarding the way Cpanel tracks bandwidth.;) I looked in on it, and had to agree.

-Lamar

I haven't seen a CPanel where the Webalizer and CPanel bandwidth numbers were actually close, even with no subdomain usage and hardly any FTP and e-mail usage. This isn't noticeable for people not using a lot of bandwidth. But once you start using bandwidth in the gigabytes, the difference becomes wider and wider....like Webalizer reporting 6GB while CPanel reporting 10GB.

So one number is being reported wrong. I suspect Webalizer isn't all that accurate.

i rely on bandmin stats

OT: Nice to see a feollow Arsian around these parts

You mentioned you would be surprised if your host wasn't logging your cgi usage. Actually, many hosts don't. The reason for this is that cgi often runs as user "nobody". This can result in the bandwidth not being included in the user's bandwidth.

Yet another reason to run suexec...