Bandwidth is the traffic received to your website. If you’ve had notification about a bandwidth limit it’s something to take seriously as if bandwidth limits are exceeded it can result with your site going down.

This post will assume you have access to your CPanel. (If not make sure you do before reading on).

1. Login to CPanel and find the ‘Bandwidth’ menu.
2. Once there you can see the different sections that are receiving traffic on your site e.g. HTTP, IMAP, SMTP etc. HTTP should always have the main share of your traffic.
3. From there you can drill in further to each of the sections by clicking on their titles e.g. HTTP.
   
4. The detailed view will show you a graph usage of the month as well as a daily breakdown.

Now that you’ve accessed the data above, here are the 2 main things to look out for:

1. Traffic Source
   Going back to the step 2 above, when looking at your bandwidth overview, if your HTTP section is not the major receiver of the traffic you should start asking questions. For example, if your FTP section has the greatest bandwidth share that could indicate someone is consistently accessing your FTP account. Generally some traffic to FTP is normal but if it’s greater than the HTTP section it’s best to get it checked by your developer.
2. Traffic Spikes 
   When reviewing your monthly/daily data look out for any unusual spikes e.g. A spike in traffic while you are running a campaign or have a sale on is perfectly normal, however a consistent spike on a same day of each month ‘could’ indicate some spam bots are scripted to access your website. Again, if you spot anything abnormal it’s best to flag it with your developer for attention so they can block any incoming spam.

Need help assessing what you see? We’re here to help.