Hi. Could someone provide a general overview of bandwidth and bandwidth calculation?

I already know the difference between 'data transfer' and 'bandwidth'. Also, I understand that to truly limiting bandwidth usage is hard (for example, someone who can telnet to your server can start downloading multi megabytes files or sending it somewhere else. The more evil ones can also do that via a PHP script, which will be recorded as the web user).

So, what I am still not sure with are:
1. is the data transfer allocated for outgoing traffic only, or does that also include incoming ;

2. how are the data transfer usually recorded by webhosts / ISP? is it in the router? server log files? And what is their methods?

Cheers!


[ I am evil, but I am a genius! ]

1. The vast majority of hosts only measure outgoing bandwidth (not incoming like Telnet/FTP/SSH traffic).

2. There are certain commands/programs on Linux and programs for WinNT/2000 which record the amount of outgoing traffic on a certain machine. Our Linux gurus should be able to elaborate.