Title: Excessive Bandwidth Usage Last modified: August 18, 2016 --- # Excessive Bandwidth Usage * [Cujo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cujo/) * (@cujo) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/) * Hello, I’m monitoring a friend’s site which has seen a huge jump in bandwidth usage over the past couple of months. The site avg just under 500 MB/month but now has jumped up to 1.24 GB and 1.32 GB (then I let it get shutdown for the remainder of the month). It’s already at 30 MB used just in the first day of the month. * I’ve created an .htaccess file stopping hotlinkers assuming this is where a lot of the bandwidth was going but it has not made a difference at all. * Looking at AWSTATS in the sites CPanel I see a lot of spam incoming links and I think this might be a potential problem. * I’ve installed and configured the following plugins Akismet, Bad Behaviour, Simple Trackback Validation and wp-cache. I assumed this would help with the load on the site but it continues to rise. * Does anyone have any experience with excessive bandwidth like this and have ways on how they stopped it or am I stuck with getting hammered on this site? Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total) * [charle97](https://wordpress.org/support/users/charle97/) * (@charle97) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573643) * did the traffic triple? * Thread Starter [Cujo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cujo/) * (@cujo) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573645) * The traffic “doubled” but I believe a lot of that is the hammering of the site from spambots etc. And that’s what I’m looking at preventing. It’s not a main stream site by any means. Basically a personal blog so I don’t think it’s real traffic but moreso the spambots and fake trackback links coming in etc faking out the stats. * [drmike](https://wordpress.org/support/users/drmike/) * (@drmike) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573649) * AWSTATS should list which pages are getting accessed and how many times. How does that look? Is there a single page getting hit all the time? If it’s spammer bots, it’s going to be wp-comment-post.php I believe. * Thread Starter [Cujo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cujo/) * (@cujo) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573654) * Yeah it’s getting hit pretty bad compared to the actual real comments for the site. For the month of May it looks like: * Viewed: 686 Entry: 450 Exit: 580 * So there I can see that people are going directly there although I still don’t think it’s a major problem although part of it. * If I look under “Connect to site from” and then Links from external page the first site listed is a real site linking to the blog with the next 50+ (I stopped counting) being junk links — pharmaceuticals, casinos etc. So I’m thinking this is part of it as well. * [Dgold](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dgold/) * (@dgold) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573657) * I would try to look at Server stats from your host, not any stats plugin from wordpress. * Look at your Webalyzer, or Analog, or whatever stats your host gives. It should have the statistic for Most Bytes Transferred By IP, and Most Bytes Transferred By File. * I bet you’re find 70% of your data transfer is from a handful of large files. Either some mp3’s, or huge picture files like from a digital camera or photoshop not optimized for web. If you’re really getting all that data action out of some text posts that would be tons of hits indeed. * And/Or you’ll find a large % of the traffic coming from 1 domain – some user, hotlinker, bot, syndicater, or feedreader. * [charle97](https://wordpress.org/support/users/charle97/) * (@charle97) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573669) * what do you think awstats is? * [Dgold](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dgold/) * (@dgold) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573674) * so is there a concentration on any certain files or IP’s? * [Samuel B](https://wordpress.org/support/users/samboll/) * (@samboll) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573675) * Activate the Akismet plugin. Download and activate Bad Behavior. This will stop comment, ping and trackback spam. [http://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/bad-behavior/](http://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/bad-behavior/) * Thread Starter [Cujo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cujo/) * (@cujo) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573677) * Dgold – I don’t have access to the stats/logs at the moment. I did download the raw logs onto my laptop that I have with me and I’ll unpack and go through in a bit although I’m not that great at reading them. Although from memory there wasn’t a major thing that I saw standing out. Most hit was the root directory if memory serves right and I can see this being the case with a lot of the incoming links being the spam links that I mentioned above. * As far as images/mp3s/large files go this isn’t the case. There’s no mp3s and I made sure that the images were optimized and the user of the site actually went back through and reduced the size of the photos even more. * samboll – If you saw above I have those two plugins activated and working as well as a couple other ones yet the problem persists. I think Bad Behavior might be stopping the new trackback spam but the ones that have already hammered the site are still persistent. Any idea on how to remove previous ones before the plugin was installed? * I installed these plugins and had them configured properly about a month or more ago. * [Dgold](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dgold/) * (@dgold) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573681) * I’m pretty sure at least one of the big 3 checks your back-comments, it might be SpamKarma2 that does it. Personally I use SK2 and Akismet, haven’t had to try BB because the other 2 catch everything for me. * Hate to say it but another option if necessary, if you really think its trackbacks, disable trackbacks for a few days and see if that changes anything. * Sounds like you might be thinking it is some old spam in your database, somehow responsible. Could be, I agree with cleaning it out. * Reading logs isn’t fun but if you know what you’re looking for it helps. I haven’t used AWSTATS so I don’t know, but if you have Webalyzer or Analog you can find this info easy enough. Obviously looking for anomolies. I seriously predict there is some stat, somewhere, that is Waaaaay out of whack, like 1 IP, or 1 file. * Another option (thinking outside the box here) is get a host that offers plenty of bandwidth and quit spending your valuable time tracking down a gnat. On my host, 1.3 GB would be a drop of mud, I can transfer that much in a day without breaking a sweat, and this is for less than $10/month. * Thread Starter [Cujo](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cujo/) * (@cujo) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573686) * Hi DGold — I might try SK2. * I actually have a large amount of bandwidth available as well. But I host a multitude of sites with it and some band related where I’d like most the bandwidth issue to go. I just thought if I could track this problem down instead of always increasing the bandwidth on the site it would be better. I’ll try a couple things out tomorrow afternoon I think. * [jabecker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jabecker/) * (@jabecker) * [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573708) * you might try disabling trackbacks and pingbacks for awhile, if you haven’t already done so. Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total) The topic ‘Excessive Bandwidth Usage’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [usage](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/usage/) * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/) * 12 replies * 6 participants * Last reply from: [jabecker](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jabecker/) * Last activity: [19 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/excessive-bandwidth-usage/#post-573708) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics