# Any web server experts in here?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-web-server-experts-in-here/221865>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [December 31, 2003, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-web-server-experts-in-here/221865 "2003-12-31T00:19:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Slacker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@Slacker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slacker)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2003, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-web-server-experts-in-here/221865/1 "2003-12-31T00:19:30Z")

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Howdy all. No idea where this should go, so why not here? 😃

I’m having a weird issue at my website this month. First some stats about my site (which is almost exclusively a messageboard):

Members: 1,600  
Threads: 47,000  
Posts: 750,000

For December:  
User Activity Statistics Average: Around 140  
New Threads Average: Around 50  
New Posts Average: Around 900

I can’t remember a time I’ve broke 35GB of traffic in a month. My host is informing me that for December I did **almost 150 GB of traffic!** :eek:

I can’t even imagine this is correct. All of the different things in cPanel tell me I’m doing just a little under a gig per day. The problem is that my server crashed right before Christmas, so my cPanel install is only a few days old. So I can’t see what might have been causing the traffic before. :mad:

My host says cPanel is totally unreliable as far as traffic is concerned. MRTG is the only way to go. So I’m looking at the MRTG page now. Under the monthly section it lists:

**Average In: 223.0 kb/s (0.2%)  
Average Out: 212.6 kb/s (0.2%)**

Using this calculator [here](http://www.savvy.net/detail.asp?category_id=6&article_id=87), that comes out to:

**In: 72.25 GB  
Out: 68.7 GB**

This is where I get confused. How it is possible that I’m doing almost as much traffic out as I’m doing in? I’m not even sure which is which, but shouldn’t whichever one is download account for a _lot_ more traffic than the upload? It doesn’t make any sense for them to be almost equal. I asked my host about this and he said “Well, bursts do count :)” with the smilie and all. Huh?

Can anyone give me advice? Am I getting screwed here? If not, I need to figure out just what is so dang popular on my website and get rid of it. 😃

Thanks a lot for any information. I really appreciate it.

- Chris S

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**Author:** ![HideoHo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ec8ea/32.png) [@HideoHo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HideoHo)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2003, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-web-server-experts-in-here/221865/2 "2003-12-31T00:35:39Z")

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Hmmm, there should be almost no way for a webserver to have more in than out traffic. Perhaps your box has been comprimised and there is a hidden FTP host. That could explain a giant leap in traffic.

Don’t you have some statistics that are per file so you can see how much traffic is transfered to each file per day. With that much traffic, you should be able to find what it is in just one day.

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**Author:** ![KP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a9adbd/32.png) [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\
**Post date:** [December 31, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-web-server-experts-in-here/221865/3 "2003-12-31T19:02:50Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> The problem is that my server crashed right before Christmas,

I was thinking “server compromise” before I got to this. Now it’s right at the top of the heap yelling “yoo hoo!”