Need solutions not plan update: hungry bandwidth

[myshakamin]

I am sick and tired of updating 3dcart pricing levels.

I have been a loyal customer of 3dcart from more than 5 years. And post many good reviews on 3dcart. I have many good conversation with Jimmy and Gil.

But it looks they are not there and their support team is little lazy.

I started with $49 with one account. Now pay $199 each on two accounts.
Business is really slow but bandwidth usage is getting hungry and hungry day by day. i.e

Last month i updated to $199 and now it is projected 30% more. which is totally not acceptable. I have told to look at next level plan which is $399 and it will cover the extra bandwidth.

I have opened several tickets asking for solutions on how to reduce bandwidth but i am getting selfish answers like

"Check pricing level. If you are seeing any discrepancies with your bandwidth, please let me know. However, the bandwidth reporting for all accounts has always been accurate"


I would appreciate if Jimmy or Gil, please look into this matter on how to reduce the bandwidth usage and make me loyal user again

[GonzaloGil]

myshakamin,
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to what you are asking.

Sure, there are some basic things to check:
- Are your images optimized?
- Are you constantly importing/exporting information which is causing you to download/upload huge export files?
- Have you check your logs for robots that you can exclude on robots.txt?
- Have you checked the stats to see if a particular IP uses a large amount of bandwidth?

I can tell you this, if you are using bandwidth its because either you have a large # of visitors, or a large # of robots coming to your site. No question about it.

Have you tried to look into this? Have you looked at what's the most downloaded file of your store? Who your top visitor is? Are you getting more visitors now than before? These are the types of things that can have an effect on your bandwidth usage, and, for the majority of these, Technical support really can't assist. You are going to need to spend a little bit of time digging through your stats. If you find anything that looks odd, bring it up to technical support, and they can look into it for you.

[Barry]

myshakamin,
I have been following your concerns with bandwidth usage over a couple of threads. We are not live yet, so these issues concern us ... but ...

as GonzaloGil points out, you really need to provide more detailed info so "apples can be compared to apples"! More exact stats. And I myself and others understand you not wanting to provide those stats on this forum. It could be one large problem or a multitude of many small problems that is "inflating" your bandwidth.

I hope you get this resolved. If you do find the culprit(s), I would love to find out how/why you fixed it!

[Jimmy]

myshakamin,
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to what you are asking.

Sure, there are some basic things to check:
- Are your images optimized?
- Are you constantly importing/exporting information which is causing you to download/upload huge export files?
- Have you check your logs for robots that you can exclude on robots.txt?
- Have you checked the stats to see if a particular IP uses a large amount of bandwidth?

I can tell you this, if you are using bandwidth its because either you have a large # of visitors, or a large # of robots coming to your site. No question about it.

Have you tried to look into this? Have you looked at what's the most downloaded file of your store? Who your top visitor is? Are you getting more visitors now than before? These are the types of things that can have an effect on your bandwidth usage, and, for the majority of these, Technical support really can't assist. You are going to need to spend a little bit of time digging through your stats. If you find anything that looks odd, bring it up to technical support, and they can look into it for you.

I have 2 questions on this too. You said

Are your images optimized? What do you mean by this the names? Please explain in detail if you can as we are having issues with bandwidth as well.

Are you constantly importing/exporting information which is causing you to download/upload huge export files? Exporting our products to google, bing, ect affects bandwidth? I know it cost bandwidth, but I thought 3dcart only charged bandwidth for trafic?

I thank you in advance for your help.

[jimmy3dcart]

I would appreciate if Jimmy or Gil, please look into this matter on how to reduce the bandwidth usage and make me loyal user again

Hi myshakamin,

Gil and me are always around, and you can reach out to us directly with any concern. I can see Gonzalo already explained the issue.

I recommend taking a look at this article, I provide in there a couple tips for optimizing bandwidth usage.

6 Tips for Optimizing Bandwidth Usage on Your Online Store | ZippyCart Blog E-Commerce News

[Jimmy]

Hi myshakamin,

Gil and me are always around, and you can reach out to us directly with any concern. I can see Gonzalo already explained the issue.

I recommend taking a look at this article, I provide in there a couple tips for optimizing bandwidth usage.

6 Tips for Optimizing Bandwidth Usage on Your Online Store | ZippyCart Blog E-Commerce News

Which way would you guys charge more bandwidth.

1.If we upload to google, bing, ect from inside 3dcart.
2. If we export the products out, and then upload them via FTP filezilla.

Thank you for your help.

[Barry]

I have 2 questions on this too. You said

Are your images optimized? What do you mean by this the names? Please explain in detail if you can as we are having issues with bandwidth as well.

Are you constantly importing/exporting information which is causing you to download/upload huge export files? Exporting our products to google, bing, ect affects bandwidth? I know it cost bandwidth, but I thought 3dcart only charged bandwidth for trafic?

I thank you in advance for your help.

1. Optimizing Images: You can have two different images of the exact same thing, both are exactly the same size (width/heigth), both look almost exactly the same in detail, color, sharpness, etc. ..... BUT one of the pictures is 51kb and the other is 9kb in size!!! Multiply that by how many times each image on your website is called up (visited) each day.

BTW: The "image" example above is actually from your home page - the four rings pictured near the top of your home page! I used a program called RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) to get those results - took about 5 seconds and both picts were almost identical!

2. Bandwidth is bandwidth - any time info (bytes) is moved from or to your website, front end or back end, you will be charged. According to 3DCart, FTP is the exception, as I was informed by jim (administrator) on a previous post about the same subject.

[kem]

I don't understand why bandwidth is such an issue with 3dcart and not with Volusion or Yahoo.

[myshakamin]

Eye Opening excessive abuse of bandwidth usage

Today i have discovered an eye opening thing.

Here is the shot from the smart stat from one of my account. I have requested support several times but they never point it out . I have been their loyal customers since years but I never understand why every few months i have to worry about bandwidth.

My total allowed limit is 30gb. But i am using over 48 according to statistics.
44 out of 48gb is used by one IP.
http://forums.3dcart.com/attachment....1&d=1309461661

30 days smart stat report
Rank IP Address Page Views Visits Hits Bandwidth
(KB)
1 108.59.0.251 1,226,033 267 1,226,239 44,618,099
2 deleteip 30,745 281 31,777 385,671
3 deleteip 25,334 184 26,193 319,540
4 deleteip 23,436 187 24,189 296,972
5 deleteip 16,155 194 16,704 200,736
6 deleteip 7,657 172 7,895 95,901
7 deleteip 4,668 8 4,668 1,869
8 deleteip 3,449 1 3,478 4,833
9 deleteip 2,160 231 2,197 26,536
10 deleteip 1,998 344 2,003 22,346
Others(7,873) 139,711 40,602 268,610 2,639,104
Total(s)1,481,346 42,471 1,613,953 48,611,605
Average(s) 187 5 204 6,167

3dcart is very happy to charge me money for each extra GB.

but Can't 3dcart auto detect or auto block this scam (or whatever you called it) IP 108.59.0.251 who is consuming 200% of my bandwidth. I have am
Even after reporting about excessive bandwidth issue, no action was taken.

Why customers are left on their own.
i just installed smart stats, so i don't know i am victim this scam from how many months or years. This is Sad.

[Mark]

You can block that single IP if you wish. Just go to settings security and block that IP.
That IP is for web hosting. Are you hosting your images on a hosting service or mirroring your site? Is someone hotlinking your image files? We had this problem at one time where ebay sellers were hotlinking our image files and using our bandwidth! :mad:
What we ended up doing for folks that did this was change the image file they were hotlinking to to a marketing image for us! :D

[GonzaloGil]

Today i have discovered an eye opening thing.

Here is the shot from the smart stat from one of my account. I have requested support several times but they never point it out . I have been their loyal customers since years but I never understand why every few months i have to worry about bandwidth.

My total allowed limit is 30gb. But i am using over 48 according to statistics.
44 out of 48gb is used by one IP.
http://forums.3dcart.com/attachment....1&d=1309461661

30 days smart stat report
Rank IP Address Page Views Visits Hits Bandwidth
(KB)
1 108.59.0.251 1,226,033 267 1,226,239 44,618,099
2 deleteip 30,745 281 31,777 385,671
3 deleteip 25,334 184 26,193 319,540
4 deleteip 23,436 187 24,189 296,972
5 deleteip 16,155 194 16,704 200,736
6 deleteip 7,657 172 7,895 95,901
7 deleteip 4,668 8 4,668 1,869
8 deleteip 3,449 1 3,478 4,833
9 deleteip 2,160 231 2,197 26,536
10 deleteip 1,998 344 2,003 22,346
Others(7,873) 139,711 40,602 268,610 2,639,104
Total(s)1,481,346 42,471 1,613,953 48,611,605
Average(s) 187 5 204 6,167

3dcart is very happy to charge me money for each extra GB.

but Can't 3dcart auto detect or auto block this scam (or whatever you called it) IP 108.59.0.251 who is consuming 200% of my bandwidth. I have am
Even after reporting about excessive bandwidth issue, no action was taken.

Why customers are left on their own.
i just installed smart stats, so i don't know i am victim this scam from how many months or years. This is Sad.

That IP appears to be a robot for a search engine:

Twenga: The largest selection online

We don't automatically block ips because you may very well want a particular search engine scanning your site, this types of decisions need to be made by you.

You can block the ips from the store manager, additionally, with most spiders/bots you could block them from robots.txt and they will respect that.

[myshakamin]

You can block that single IP if you wish. Just go to settings security and block that IP.
That IP is for web hosting. Are you hosting your images on a hosting service or mirroring your site? Is someone hotlinking your image files? We had this problem at one time where ebay sellers were hotlinking our image files and using our bandwidth! :mad:
What we ended up doing for folks that did this was change the image file they were hotlinking to to a marketing image for us! :D

No according to 3dcart, That IP appears to be a robot for a search engine:

Twenga: The largest selection online.

It looks a joke to me. Check the numbers this is 44GB of bandwidth.
44GB IS TOO MUCH. All of which is eaten up by that scam search engine.

Can you imagine paying 44x$5 every month for no use? while actual true bandwidth is just less then 4GB.

On top of it, we can not block it in advance and there is no way detect it unless you check the sophisticated statistics very closely.

How many average 3dcart customers check this sophisticated statistics?

[myshakamin]

That IP appears to be a robot for a search engine:

Twenga: The largest selection online

We don't automatically block ips because you may very well want a particular search engine scanning your site, this types of decisions need to be made by you.

You can block the ips from the store manager, additionally, with most spiders/bots you could block them from robots.txt and they will respect that.

3dcart need to realistic unless 3dcart wants to make money by allowing these scam search engine. This is not small thing. You need to take immediate action and auto block these sites. Check the numbers this is 44GB of bandwidth.
44GB IS TOO MUCH.

You can not say that just block IP. No body expect this. This is 10 times more
then actual usage. my actual usage is 4gb plus 44gb used by this scam search engine.

There should be auto tool that blocks too much hits or usage like this gang of hungry elephants.

Waiting for reply.

[GonzaloGil]

3dcart need to realistic unless 3dcart wants to make money by allowing these scam search engine. This is not small thing. You need to take immediate action and auto block these sites. Check the numbers this is 44GB of bandwidth.
44GB IS TOO MUCH.

You can not say that just block IP. No body expect this. This is 10 times more
then actual usage. my actual usage is 4gb plus 44gb used by this scam search engine.

There should be auto tool that blocks too much hits or usage like this gang of hungry elephants.

Waiting for reply.

We are not prepared to filter traffic in this manner, this is not part of our services and we really don't have the hardware/software in place to accurately do this, and, we wouldn't just want to start blocking random ips.

If you don't have the time to monitor website and block ips you don't want to give access to, you might want to try is using a third party service like this:

Performance, Security & Apps for Any Website | CloudFlare | Home

They have the technology to filter traffic, ignore bad traffic, and even deliver things quicker by caching images and elements closer to your users.

There are many others, but this one is pretty inexpensive. (From FREE to $20/mo)

[piaf]

I don't understand why bandwidth is such an issue with 3dcart and not with Volusion or Yahoo.

LOL! It was a HUGE issue with me over on Volusion. People posted about it in their forums all the time back when I was there. But at least 3dCart provides stats that you can look at to see who/what is eating up your bandwidth so you can take steps to control it. Volusion has nothing in the way of usage stats, so you're in the dark and have no way of knowing how to control it.