I have always gone far below my monthly bandwidth limit (2500 Gigs) with my host (1and1). All of a sudden, I reached my limit half way through October and has gone over by almost 1000 gigs. This is costing me .50 per gig!! I didn't realize it until it was too late and now I will be billed almost, if not over, $400 for this. I think, more than likely, someone used my image hosting site to steal all this bandwidth. Am i screwed or do you think 1and1 would hear my pleas?!?!

First you need to do is to ask 1and1 to provide you with consumption log
and find who is sucking your bandwidth.

Then you need to blacklist offending IP addresses and immediately setup
anti leaching system.

Use Awstats and start monitoring your site activities on a daily bases.


fastreplies

Unfortunately there are some learning points here, especially considering the type of site (image hosting).

1. Image hosting can be very resource intensive as you've found. Presumably you didn't impose any maximum usage limits for each user?

2. As you have data transfer limits it's really up to you to monitor your usage regularly so if you find you are going to have an overage at any point you can take appropriate action to minimise your costs. Your host is only imposing the extra fees as they have stated in their terms (and what you agreed to when signing up) - it's worth talking to them to see if you can get the bill reduced but don't hold your breath - you did agree to their terms right?

It's a tough one but learn from it so you're prepared next time

Get a print of your site logs, $400 is a pretty good sum of money, you could get a few a few dedis!

Am i screwed or do you think 1and1 would hear my pleas?!?!

You're lucky it's not a much bigger sum. I recall a host charging $6 per GB (though this was a couple of years ago).

I recall a host charging $6 per GB

... wow, thats crazy. I suppose it could always be worse. lesson learned

You're lucky it's not a much bigger sum. I recall a host charging $6 per GB (though this was a couple of years ago).

I know many WHC who are charging $5.00 per Gig this days because the cost is directly related to speed. To have 100mbps connection maybe very costly.


fastreplies

6$/Gig in overage! That would have made his bill 12x400...... $4800. Definitly someone should look into when host shopping!