This article explains how Donhost tracks dedicated server data transfer and bandwidth usage and interprets this into your hosting control panel.
This article applied to Dedicated Servers purchased prior to 2006.
The data transfer page displays the data transfer usage of your servers numerically and its distribution over time as a line chart. The default report will select data for the current monthly data transfer billing period, however you may configure a custom report using the form at the bottom of the page.
Time Period
The report will be based on data from the specified period of time. You may select a standard time period from the drop-down list, the current billing period or a custom time period using the Year, Month, Day and Hour values.
Servers & IP Addresses
The 'All Servers & IPs' option shows the combined data transfer for all your servers and their IP addresses as one data series on the graph and table. You may select specific servers or IP addresses from the lists, multiple selections may be made by holding down the Ctrl key, a separate data series for each server or IP address will be shown on the graph and table.
Traffic
You can show data only for outgoing traffic (packets leaving your server for the Internet), only for incoming traffic (packets arriving at your server from the Internet) or for both outgoing and incoming traffic on separate data series or combined into one data series.
Options may be combined with one-another to create a data transfer report for any scenario. Once you have selected the required options, click the 'Generate Report' button.
Billing Data
When data for the current billing period, servers and IPs selected comprising entire billing entities with identical billing dates (e.g. billing data for a server cannot be shown if only some of its IP addresses are selected, billing data for two servers with different billing dates cannot be shown on the same report) and combined traffic is selected, additional billing related data will be shown in the table.
The monthly data transfer quota is shown, which includes both the quota included with the rental of the server and the quota provided by any active NetBlox assigned to the server; any inactive NetBlox, those for which payment has not yet been received for the current month, are not included. The percentage of the quota used is displayed alongside the total usage figure.
A projection of the data transfer usage for the entire billing period, based on the data transfer to date is shown. If this figure exceeds the quota, the cost of the estimated overage is also shown. The projected figures can be used to identify servers which are likely to exceed their data transfer quotas and to aid your planning and budgeting.
Charging
Data transfer usage in excess of your quota is generally billed in 2,000 megabyte (2GB) blocks throughout the course of the billing period. Excess data transfer usage is calculated and billed for daily. This method of billing spreads costs over the entire billing period and makes it easier for you to monitor your data transfer usage as opposed to a single charge being levied at the end of the billing period.
Warning Emails
You can choose to receive a warning email if any server on your account is projected to use more data transfer than allocated in a month. By default you will receive this warning email. If you do not wish to receive the warning email, you may uncheck the box provided.
Methodology
Between each of our routers and the switched network to which your server is connected is a packet counter. The packet counter acts as a transparent Ethernet bridge. The size of each packet which is relayed onto or from the router is measured and attributed to the IP address from which it came or is destined. Periodically, each packet counter transfers the collected data to our central database.
Traffic which traverses only the switched network to reach its destination, which includes that passing between your Donhost servers, backup data, broadcasts and our staff accessing your server as part of our management service will not pass through a packet counter, will not be deducted from your quota and you will not be charged for it. Traffic arriving from the Internet which is blocked by our firewalls or filters will not be passed through a packet counter and thus will not be charged for.
Please note: This is the most accurate and fair way to measure data transfer, you should however note that the figures obtained using this method will not exactly match those shown in your dedicated server's control panel. The figures shown in your dedicated server control panel are obtained from the analysis of log files created by the software applications running on the server (e.g. Apache web server, Qmail mail server). Therefore they do not include data transfer which is not logged (e.g. TCP overhead, traffic destined for a port which does not have a service running on it, services which do not log data transfer including SSH and DNS) or cannot be attributed to a specific user (e.g. email sent out from web site scripts, email connections which do not result in the transmission of a message, unsuccessful POP/FTP logins, unsuccessful requests for web pages).