Bandwidth usage "spike" this month

[Nodaz]

Admittedly i am a novice when it comes to this, i have a shared hosting account through with which i host a couple forums. this particular forum has been up for years without me ever seeing the following:
i started getting bandwidth warnings( reaching limit).
The bandwidth limit on this particular site was set at 5GB, so i set it to 10GB and it quickly reached that limit.
it just seems a huge spike in bandwidth use this month and im worried it is something nefarious.


The other "could be " is that subject matter of the forum may be getting traffic form a competing products users since THAT product started charging a substantial fee for use of there once free product and they are "jumping ship".

So i have several questions
A. what is a "normal" limit for bandwidth on a small forum.
in looking at awstats is see the following regarding bandwidth usage:
   gif   Image                                           696,267   61.1 %   338.48 MB   17.9 %
   php   Dynamic PHP Script file                   211,765   18.5 %   961.71 MB   51 %
   js   JavaScript file                                     96,968   8.5 %   371.87 MB   19.7 %
   css   Cascading Style Sheet file              65,274   5.7 %   91.01 MB           4.8 %
     jpg   Image                                              62,078   5.4 %   19.55 MB              1 %
   html   HTML or XML static page                        5,466   0.4 %   64.50 MB            3.4 %
   Unknown                                                        1,083   0 %           38.21 MB              2 %

is there anything particularly unusual about what you see?
anything else i should check or be worried about?
maybe this is just a good thing that im getting more traffic?

[#jsDotx3]

You have enabled cookies?, Cookies decrease bandwidth because not loading again images

[Acans]

Have you had a spike in registrations and spam posted on your site? I had the same issue when I left registrations as instant on one of my test sites.

[Nodaz]

"enable local storage of cookies" is checked in server settings( smf 1.1.19 btw) is that what you mean?

Ive had a spike in registrations, but not spam, legitimate posts, so that is good.

[PhuriousGeorge]

"enable local storage of cookies" is checked in server settings( smf 1.1.19 btw) is that what you mean?

Ive had a spike in registrations, but not spam, legitimate posts, so that is good.

How much of a spike are we talking? 10GB seems like a lot of bandwidth. My dedicated server running both my forums and a few game servers doesn't even hit 10GB.

[Nodaz]

hovered between 1.7 to 3.7 gig a month from Jan of last year an then so far this month: 8.1 Gigs
Jan 2014
HTTP usage    8.01 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   8.01 Gig
   

Dec 2013
HTTP usage    3.39 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   3.39 Gig
   

Nov 2013
HTTP usage    3.15 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   3.15 Gig
   

Oct 2013
HTTP usage    2.93 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   2.93 Gig
   

Sep 2013
HTTP usage    2.56 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   2.56 Gig

Aug 2013
HTTP usage    2.74 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   2.74 Gig
   

Jul 2013
HTTP usage    3.18 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   3.18 Gig
   

Jun 2013
HTTP usage    3.70 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   3.7 Gig
   

May 2013
HTTP usage    3.18 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   3.18 Gig
   

Apr 2013
HTTP usage    2.47 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   2.47 Gig
   

Mar 2013
HTTP usage      2.19 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   2.19 Gig
   

Feb 2013
HTTP usage      1.54 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   1.54 Gig
   

Jan 2013
HTTP usage   1.70 Gig
IMAP usage   0.00 Meg
POP3 usage   0.00 Meg
SMTP usage   0.00 Meg
FTP usage   0.00 Meg

Total (all services)   1.7 Gig
   
are there any reports i can look at in awstats that will tell me exactly what is using the bandwidth?

   

[Nodaz]

20th -24th seem to be where the spike was:
Bandwidth by Day
Day   All Traffic (Megabytes)    HTTP Traffic    SMTP Traffic    FTP Traffic    POP3 Traffic    IMAP Traffic
1   91.30   91.30          0.00                   0.00                   0.00                   0.00                  0.00
2   104.61   104.61           
3   109.93   109.93    
4   131.99   131.99    
5   88.70   88.70    
6   108.08   108.08    
7   137.31   137.31    
8   124.78   124.78    
9   118.04   118.04    
10   127.72   127.72    
11   99.55   99.55    
12   97.56   97.56    
13   123.47   123.47    
14   119.71   119.71    
15   129.97   129.97    
16   125.18   125.18    
17   112.82   112.82    
18   131.04   131.04    
19   84.71   84.71    
20   839.52   839.52    
21   1736.77   1736.77    
22   1691.20   1691.20    
23   799.45   799.45    
24   195.76   195.76    
25   119.38   119.38    
26   114.30   114.30    
27   169.99   169.99    
28   175.69   175.69    
29   168.87   168.87    
30   29.75   29.75    
31   0.00   0.00    0.00   0.00   0.00   0.00
Total   8207.15   8207.15    0   0   0    0

[Nodaz]

   File type usage stats:

        gif    Image                                         737,189   61.1 %   358.47 MB   18 %
   php   Dynamic PHP Script file                 224,241   18.6 %   1008.47 MB   50.8 %
   js   JavaScript file                                 102,550   8.5 %   393.86 MB   19.8 %
   css   Cascading Style Sheet file           69,006   5.7 %   96.36 MB           4.8 %
   jpg   Image                                           65,715   5.4 %   20.70 MB              1 %
   html   HTML or XML static page                     5,777   0.4 %   67.75 MB           3.4 %
   Unknown                                                     1,083   0 %           38.21 MB            1.9 %

anyway to find out which .gif  is the culprit?

[margarett]

You can try to disable hotlink of your images (long shot).

Or, is your logo a gif image? You need to check the number of pageviews also. If you have a big logo and you are getting a lot of pageviews, it's also likely this causes a lot of bandwidth to be used (even though most of the browsers should cache it)

Or maybe really big attachments?

[Nodaz]

The forum runs an almost complete "stock" default theme.  No logo image.
how do i disable hotlink of my images?
no big attachments i can see in any posts this month.( is there a way to see only posts with attachments?)
Pages views look like this :
Pages-URL (Top 25)   -   Full list   -   Entry   -   Exit    
15 different pages-url                                            Viewed                Average size        Entry         Exit   
/index.php                                                            224,107                    4.60 KB       48,048        48,587   
/                                                                                5,711                  12.07 KB       3,643        2,934   
/cgi-sys/cgiecho/attachments/avatar_tmp_2158        1,081                  36.14 KB           
http:// changedforumname.com/index.php                   128                  13.04 KB         34             31   
/index.php/trackback/                                                     59                    5.03 KB         59   
//                                                                                   3                  25.30 KB         1   
/Themes/default/images/                                                   2                    2.67 KB           
/index.php/index.php                                                   2                  25.52 KB         2       
/index.php/registration                                                   2                  25.53 KB         2             2   
/index.php/registration/                                                   1                  25.50 KB         1             1   
//index.php                                                                   1                  22.67 KB         1             1   
/Settings.php                                                                   1                  20 Bytes         1       
https:// changedforumname.com/index.php                   1                     5.20 KB         1                 1   
/Settings_bak.php                                                           1                    20 Bytes           
/Themes/default/images/topic/                                   1                      9.58 KB          1             1

[LiroyvH]

Big chance of a third party site linking to an image indeed; check referrers and the file that used most kb.

I would search first for the culprit rather than enable hotlink protections at once... Hotlink protection can be a really nasty pain in the ass to legitimate users directly to your site.

[PhuriousGeorge]

Big chance of a third party site linking to an image indeed; check referrers and the file that used most kb.

I would search first for the culprit rather than enable hotlink protections at once... Hotlink protection can be a really nasty pain in the ass to legitimate users directly to your site.

Curious, but would this include Google if the search term that pulled up an image on your site happened to be particularly popular? (May explain an historical issue of mine)

[darlius]

This has happened to me also. worst thing it has happened to my best client. what i have done temporary is to look into the error logs and block IP one by one which appears there. i believe if an IP tries to access a file not inside my site e.g .x.php.  this is a sign that he is a hacker and might be responsible for the  loss of bandwidth am suffering. it has so far worked for now 2 days, am looking into the error logs every 10 hours. i hope this works