KB / Account Control Panel / Status :: Bandwidth
From DreamHost
Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that flows to your web site. This section is useful for keeping track of your bandwidth usage.
To learn more about bandwidth and monitoring your usage, keep reading.
Parent Article
Can I have my site turned off automatically if I go over my Bandwidth allotment?
Unfortunately not. As of June 2008, it is no longer possible to set up new bandwidth throttles.
How many hits or visitors or page views is 1 GB?
Well, according to our calculations 1GB (1,000MB) is for an average web site about:
13,000 viewers or 53,000 page views or 74,000 file hits.
These figures are based on average statistics we've measured from the sites we host.
What is bandwidth?
Bandwidth use means the total size of all files transferred to web surfers from your site. So if your main page is 30KB total and 100 people visit it a month, that will be a total of 3000KB of bandwidth used, or 3MB.
Sites using more bandwith per month than allowed by their plan will be charged accordingly. This is very rare, however, and fewer than 1% of our sites have ever been asked to do so.
How and when is bandwidth usage calculated?
Every night we calculate every site's usage for that day, and compare it to their usage so far in that billing cycle to see if they are on pace to go over their allotment for that month. If so, the site owner is automatically sent an email with all the relevant data, including our predicted usage and how much extra that would cost. This generally gives plenty of advance warning for people to tone down their page sizes or do whatever they'd like to do to avoid charges.
When somebody actually goes over their allotment for the monthly billing cycle, that daily calculator will again email them, and this time let them know that a charge has been assessed to their account. The charges will build up daily until the end of that monthly billing cycle, at which point the final amount will be charged to the account credit card (or whatever payment method they choose to use).
Bandwidth and your DreamHost account.
What exactly is bandwidth, and how does its use apply to me as a DreamHost customer?
What Is Bandwidth?
Bandwidth the total size of all files transferred to web surfers from your site.
If the Internet were a giant sewer, it would be composed of giant pipes and smaller pipes, forming a giant grid underneath the city. Those whose computers are connected with modems would be water faucets and kitchen sinks. Those with cable modems or ADSL would be about the same as a swimming pool. DreamHost (that'd be us!) is pretty much the equivelent of a nice large resevoir holding thousands of gallons of water, ready to be shipped to the sinks and pools of the city.
From the resevoir flows great amounts of water to the citizens of this great city of web pages and streaming audio. How does it get around? Pipes. Big pipes, small pipes. Lots of pipes. DreamHost has some very large pipes - we need them, as we host a lot of sites. The larger the pipe, the more content it can carry - the more bandwidth capacity it has. Your modem has very little bandwidth capacity, but a T3 has much much more.
What This Means
Bandwidth is important. Without it, we wouldn't be able to serve all of the sites that we do. Also, keeping track of which sites consume more bandwidth is also important. Why? If a certain site is consuming a significant chunk of bandwidth, that's some that isn't being given to the other sites we host. To solve this problem, at Dreamhost we have a cap on the amount of Bandwidth a given site can use without extra charge. If you transfer less than the bandwidth allotment included with your particular hosting plan, you will not be charged extra. For most people, that means that bandwidth is practically unlimited. For those that exceed this amount, we provide extra bandwidth at competitive rates (this is so we can upgrade our bandwidth capacity to meet the demand these popular sites require). We have found that fewer than 1% of our customers ever exceed our bandwidth cap.
Determining Bandwidth Use
The bandwidth usage option at theWeb Admin Panel tells you a number of things. In all cases the bandwidth usage refers to the sum of all the file sizes sent to your site's users for the period being discussed.
At the top of the page it says Bandwidth Report for Yourdomain.com. Clicking on 'yourdomain.com' will bring up a bar graph of your daily bandwidth use for the last 8 weeks. The number in the top left it the maximum number of bytes ever transferred in a single day. For example, if it says 1600000000 that means you once transferred 1600MB (1.6GB) in one day.
Next, you'll see detailed stats for yesterday. Click on that and you will get an in-depth analysis of what everyone who visited your site did the day previous. A graph will be shown similar to the last one, but with 24 hours instead of 8 weeks shown. Then, you'll see a list of all the days you chose to look at with a number to the right. The number is the amount of MB (megabytes) transferred for that day. If you click on the date, you'll get a breakdown of which files were hit and how many times each. If you click on 'referer' next to the file on that page, you'll get a list of the URLs that your visitors came from to get to that file.
What's the point of all these statistics? Hopefully you will get an idea how many people and what type of people are visiting your site. Analysis of your viewing population is very important in promoting your web site. Also, if you are paying on a bandwidth scale for use (like our adult sites) you can get an idea of how much you will be paying for the month.
How much bandwidth do I get?
That all depends on which hosting plan you've signed up for.
Each of our hosting plans includes a varying amount of monthly bandwidth. Be sure to check DreamHost.com to see how much bandwidth you receive with your plan.
If you appear to be in danger of exceeding your monthly allotment, our system will send you an e-mailed warning to let you know. That'll give you a chance to take action before you incur additional charges for bandwidth usage.
We will never automatically shut down sites that exceed their limit.
How much does extra bandwidth cost?
Bandwidth overage is charged at a flat rate of $0.10 per GB.
Overage is calculated and charged per month. DreamHost will not automatically shut down sites that exceed their limit. In the unlikely case that your site exceeds its allocation, you will be notified and offered the opportunity to pay for more bandwidth. You will always be contacted before any action is taken.
Of course if you are consistently using more bandwidth than is allowed by your plan you may want to consider adding a 'Double Bandwidth' upgrade to your account.
Where are the log files for my domain?
They are available via ftp in your home directory, within the directory called "logs". The full paths will be something like:
/home/username/logs/yourdomain.com/http.#####/access.log /home/username/logs/yourdomain.com/http.#####/error.log
The italicized portions of the path above should be replaced with information relevant to you. Just look in the directory to see what ##### is.
Also note that your older logs are kept in that directory as well, and named things like access.log.1.gz. The number is how many days old they are and the .gz means they are compressed. You can uncompress them with something like WinZip or Stuffit Expander.
By default, we keep 3 days of logs, but you can change this to as many days as you'd like from the Status::Statistics tab (click the "days" link next to your domain). Any logs besides the last three days will count against your disk usage quota.
In order to make much sense of your log files, you will need to use a log processing program. One good (commercial) option is ['http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer/' Funnel Web]. A good article with links to some other log processors can be found ['http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/10825_1128011_3' here].
Is there a way for me to monitor my own bandwidth use?
- Visit the "Status > Bandwidth" section of our web panel.
- Type in the desired timespan for which you wish to see your bandwidth use, and press the Show button.
- A chart will display with your overall bandwidth usage by domain and by plan!
How do I view my site's stats?
You may view your site's stats by going to the following URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com/stats/
(remembering to replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name)
You can get/set your username and password for this area in the "Status > Stats".
Note that some web application software such as WordPress, Movable Type, Greymatter, and Drupal may 'steal' the /stats request and try to process it itself instead of letting you view your stats. Typically the stealing of the URL is done with a set of mod_rewrite rules in a .htaccess file. You can edit the .htaccess file and add these three extra rules in the main set to pass through the requests for /stats:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/stats/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/failed_auth.html$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
