Not too long ago our bandwidth raised with almost 40 000 mb within about 2 days and after investigation it appears that was a bot from funnel.co.za that seems to be “stuck in a loop” or whatever since the few websites involved was not even 50 mb in total.
With the high price of bandwidth in SA this of course rock our pocket like hell so we block funnel.co.za from all our servers. (By the way. In UK we pay R3000 for a server with 300GB bandwidth. In SA, such bandwidth would cost around R27 000)
After that we moved almost all our websites to UK servers and since then never got such crazy bandwidth usage again. (with hundreds of websites)
Recently I moved 4 domains back to our local server and within less than a week there was again a sharp increase in bandwidth usage 2000 mb within short period on one website that is only 15mb big but we blocked the bot from zen.co.za in time.
After some investigation it appears that both funnel.co.za and zen.co.za are “search engines” with both of them not in operation yet at the time of this incidents. Both of them are also within the Internet Solutions IP range.
What I don’t like and sounds fishy to me is why the hell would both of them be either faultily or programmed in such way that it hit the same website over and over and over again?
The reality of the situation is that there is NO valid or logical reason for a bot to increase bandwidth usage so much unless there are some hidden motives behind that.
It would be difficult to determine WHAT but it would for example be easy for a place like Internet Solutions to run such a program on the websites of clients at the competition. (IS charge way more for bandwidth and server hosting than some competitors) or for Telkom to run such a program to increase their income.
Fact of the matter is that bandwidth in SA is so EXPENSIVE that normal, standard and no business in their right mind would ran up to much bandwidth for nothing.
Remember it is a dual charge because WE must pay for such bandwidth AND they must pay for such bandwidth too. With for example 40 000mb bandwidth charged to our account within 2 days, how much bandwidth would it be if the bot did the same with 100 or 1000 or 10 000 websites over one month period?
Funny thing is that, over a period of about 2 years, it is ALWAYS our local servers that got such bandwidth increase due to these bots but never our international sites, some precise identical than the local ones.
About 90% of our almost thousand of websites are on international servers with MANY of them in the Nr.1 or other high search engine spot. The local ones also links direct to many of our international hosted sites so why did the bot not followed the links to the international hosted sites????
And lastly. Why the shi t would the bot use 2000 mb bandwidth for a 15mb site within hours unless it was programmed to do so with the specific aim to increase bandwidth?
With the high price of bandwidth in SA this of course rock our pocket like hell so we block funnel.co.za from all our servers. (By the way. In UK we pay R3000 for a server with 300GB bandwidth. In SA, such bandwidth would cost around R27 000)
After that we moved almost all our websites to UK servers and since then never got such crazy bandwidth usage again. (with hundreds of websites)
Recently I moved 4 domains back to our local server and within less than a week there was again a sharp increase in bandwidth usage 2000 mb within short period on one website that is only 15mb big but we blocked the bot from zen.co.za in time.
After some investigation it appears that both funnel.co.za and zen.co.za are “search engines” with both of them not in operation yet at the time of this incidents. Both of them are also within the Internet Solutions IP range.
What I don’t like and sounds fishy to me is why the hell would both of them be either faultily or programmed in such way that it hit the same website over and over and over again?
The reality of the situation is that there is NO valid or logical reason for a bot to increase bandwidth usage so much unless there are some hidden motives behind that.
It would be difficult to determine WHAT but it would for example be easy for a place like Internet Solutions to run such a program on the websites of clients at the competition. (IS charge way more for bandwidth and server hosting than some competitors) or for Telkom to run such a program to increase their income.
Fact of the matter is that bandwidth in SA is so EXPENSIVE that normal, standard and no business in their right mind would ran up to much bandwidth for nothing.
Remember it is a dual charge because WE must pay for such bandwidth AND they must pay for such bandwidth too. With for example 40 000mb bandwidth charged to our account within 2 days, how much bandwidth would it be if the bot did the same with 100 or 1000 or 10 000 websites over one month period?
Funny thing is that, over a period of about 2 years, it is ALWAYS our local servers that got such bandwidth increase due to these bots but never our international sites, some precise identical than the local ones.
About 90% of our almost thousand of websites are on international servers with MANY of them in the Nr.1 or other high search engine spot. The local ones also links direct to many of our international hosted sites so why did the bot not followed the links to the international hosted sites????
And lastly. Why the shi t would the bot use 2000 mb bandwidth for a 15mb site within hours unless it was programmed to do so with the specific aim to increase bandwidth?
