Noooo!

title: Noooo! date: 2005-07-01 20:37:31

Got an email from my ISP saying they've noticed that our bandwidth usage is "substantially more than the average Internet user", and asking (ie, telling) us to contact them ASAP. Not sure what this would be about. I mean, yes, I am hosting a bunch of websites here in strict contravention of their AUP...but a quick look at MRTG shows that we simply can't be doing that much traffic: 2.5GB or so last month for the web, and maybe another GB for email, DNS, and whatnot. We don't do filesharing, so that's out. I've downloaded some ISOs and such, but no more than usual -- less, in fact. So what the hell?

As a result, I'm looking at virtual server hosting, just in case. If anyone has any recommendations or war stories, please drop a line.

Update: I talked to the Shaw people, and was told I'd done 55 GB total over the month. This was 'way beyond what I expected, and I couldn't figure it out. I looked at the usage graphs, and found that it was nearly symmetrical: almost 1GB up and 1GB down every day. And it had started at the end of May. What the...

Then I realized: I'd rebooted my desktop and server around that time, and the two addresses they'd got were on different subnets. I back up files from the server every night, and it's about 1GB or so. That meant that 1GB was going out from my server, hitting Shaw's router, then coming back to my desktop machine...making it about 2GB per day, very symmetrical.

I've added another ethernet card to each machine, hooked up a crossover cable, put in a restrictive firewall, and it's much better: 300MB total for yesterday. This is well under Shaw's "guideline" (ie, rule) of 20GB total per month. (Shaw, in their wisdom, refuse to put these limits on their AUP page, but instead insist that you call in and spend 10 minutes on hold for tech support to find out.) Aside from this blip (and a similar one in December), the average traffic over the last 12 months has been between 3 GB and 9GB total; I rarely serve more than 3GB in a month. Good to know.