Re: [cobalt-security] traffic question

[Matthew Nuzum <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, what you're doing is probably what I call "high density
hosting".  Lots of low bandwidth sites, in many cases all on the same IP
address.  The common characteristic is that there are lots of sites on
each IP address.

I've thought about this myself, and I'll warn you, inability to monitor
and control bandwidth has put many hosting companies out of business. 
However, IP based solutions usually don't work well when you have lots
of sites on an IP.

Unfortunately, your real choices are somewhat limited.  Using the below
option mentioned by AYoung is good if you want to keep your peak
bandwidth under control, but probably won't help you on a per-site
basis.  The throttling mentioned below will keep all sites combined
below a certain point.

What I recommend is saving all of your log files.  That means making a
change to your logrotate scripts (in /etc/cron.daily/logrotate I think)
so that your logs are kept.  Then, get a good (probably commercial such
as webtrends or similar) log processor.  You can then see the bandwidth
used for a site's http traffic.

If you offer e-mail or ftp services, you're going to have to save and
process these logs.  I found a tool a while back on sunsite
(http://metalab.unc.edu) that will convert e-mail log files into common
log format so that it can be processed by standard web log processing
tools.  ProFTP also supports using the same log format as apache, so it
is easily processed.

An option that won't work (probably) but does provide very good reports
is MRTG.  It uses SMTP to poll data from routers ethernet interfaces. 
It does reporting on a per IP basis, which once again isn't useful
unless your sites all have their own IP.

Good Luck,
Matt Nuzum

On Tue, 2002-02-26 at 09:06, AYoung@Home wrote:
    on 2/26/02 3:50 AM, ICDservers.com at info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
    
    > Hi All,
    > 
    > I was wondering if any of you have solved this one yet, as i stil lam
    > looking for a good option.
    > 
    > The problem is this.
    > 
    > All my hosters get a standard free amount of datatraffic per month, say
    > 1 GB. For normal website hosting this is sufficient, but some of the
    > hosters generate more traffic and that has to be paid extra. I am now
    > looking for a tool or whatever that will allow me to track who has
    > generated how much in a certain month, for billing purposes of course ;)
    > Also if there is a way to restrict a site to the agreed amount of
    > traffic ( like the free hosters do ) that would be great.
    > 
    > 
    > Anyone any ideas about this ?
    
    If memory servers me right you can set bandwith if that's what you want to
    do per IP via the Cobalt GUI (Raq4i).
    
    Access Server GUI-->Control Panel-->Bandwith (top of page)-->Add, then
    complete.  Of course if you only have 1 IP # then you'll probably not be
    able to restrict.
    
    As far as a tracking software or script I'm sure there's something out
    there.
    
    aky
    
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