PlusNet and 'bandwidth abuse'

Anyone had this situation before? Logged on this morning and found my
site removed because I have allegedly exceeded my bandwidth allowance,
which appears to be 10MB per day. Checked my email and sure enough, PN
are alleging I have used 264MB in the last 24 hours! What I have to do
is raise a ticket in which I detail the steps I've taken to prevent
this happening again.

The problem is, my site is tiny - I think around 50kb total - and is
there purely to assist a former colleague with a job search by
providing links to possible opportunities on various job sites. That
being so, I can't see how this can have happened and therefore can't
promise it won't happen again, or detail steps I've taken to correct
the problem.

Rather than repeat the tale of woe in full I'll simply paste below the
ticket I've just raised, but I'd welcome comments from anyone who has
been in the same boat and can suggest a way forward (apart from the
obvious one of leaving PlusNet, which I'm certainly prepared to do if
this nonsense isn't sorted out very quickly).

====================

I have had my website removed due to alleged excessive bandwidth use,
but I am certain that either a) this is an error on the part of PlusNet
or b) my site has been 'hacked' in some way. I suspect a) to be far
more likely, though of course I am not in a position to check the
content of the site because it has been removed.

As you will be able to verify, the site is mainly a specific job search
site for one individual, containing about 20 links and a few small JPGs
- there's also a page with a larger JPG and a small music clip. I
believe the entire content to be around 50kb. It has existed in much
the same form for over 6 months with no problems yet suddenly you
allege it has delivered 264MB in one day, which would equate to around
5000 users browsing the entire site!

I have just had a very frustrating conversation with '[DELETED]' in
your call centre who couldn't seem to understand that I can't make
PlusNet a promise to reduce bandwidth in future when I have no idea how
this situation came about in the first place. He admitted he knows
nothing about websites but was unwilling to put me in touch with anyone
who does - he was not prepared to accept that PlusNet's systems could
possibly be wrong, but could not suggest what arrangements I could make
to prevent it happening again. He was unwilling or unable to understand
that, because making such a promise is a condition of restoration of
service, I have no way forward and my website will remain inactive.

Unless someone can inject a large dose of common sense to this issue
very quickly I will have no option but to sign up with another ISP
purely in order to restore my website.

I look forward to your comments.

Steve wrote:
> Anyone had this situation before? Logged on this morning and found my
> site removed because I have allegedly exceeded my bandwidth allowance,
> which appears to be 10MB per day.

You have a 250MB/day bandwidth allowance so it appears that you have
only just exceeded this.

> Checked my email and sure enough, PN
> are alleging I have used 264MB in the last 24 hours! What I have to do
> is raise a ticket in which I detail the steps I've taken to prevent
> this happening again.
>
> The problem is, my site is tiny - I think around 50kb total - and is
> there purely to assist a former colleague with a job search by
> providing links to possible opportunities on various job sites. That
> being so, I can't see how this can have happened and therefore can't
> promise it won't happen again, or detail steps I've taken to correct
> the problem.

The first thing I would suggest you do is activate your webstats:-
https://portal.plus.net/my.html?GCs%...8lpWT1sxQov771

This will allow you to see where certain hits to your site are
originating from. It may be something as simple as another (very
popular) site hotlinking to one or more of the images on your site. This
would mean that whenever somebody browsed to the popular site, it would
be your bandwidth used to deliver the images. Webstats will show whether
or not this is the case.

>
> Rather than repeat the tale of woe in full I'll simply paste below the
> ticket I've just raised, but I'd welcome comments from anyone who has
> been in the same boat and can suggest a way forward (apart from the
> obvious one of leaving PlusNet, which I'm certainly prepared to do if
> this nonsense isn't sorted out very quickly).

There's some pretty useful info available here:-
http://usertools.plus.net/tutorials/id/48

Hope this helps!

Kind Regards,

--
|Bob Pullen Broadband Solutions for
|Training & Project Liaison Home & Business @
|PlusNet plc www.plus.net
+ ----- PlusNet - The smarter way to broadband ------

"Steve" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
> Anyone had this situation before? Logged on this morning and found my
> site removed because I have allegedly exceeded my bandwidth allowance,
> which appears to be 10MB per day. Checked my email and sure enough, PN
> are alleging I have used 264MB in the last 24 hours! What I have to do
> is raise a ticket in which I detail the steps I've taken to prevent
> this happening again.
>
> The problem is, my site is tiny - I think around 50kb total - and is
> there purely to assist a former colleague with a job search by
> providing links to possible opportunities on various job sites. That
> being so, I can't see how this can have happened and therefore can't
> promise it won't happen again, or detail steps I've taken to correct
> the problem.
>
> Rather than repeat the tale of woe in full I'll simply paste below the
> ticket I've just raised, but I'd welcome comments from anyone who has
> been in the same boat and can suggest a way forward (apart from the
> obvious one of leaving PlusNet, which I'm certainly prepared to do if
> this nonsense isn't sorted out very quickly).
>
> ====================
>
> I have had my website removed due to alleged excessive bandwidth use,
> but I am certain that either a) this is an error on the part of PlusNet
> or b) my site has been 'hacked' in some way. I suspect a) to be far
> more likely, though of course I am not in a position to check the
> content of the site because it has been removed.
>
> As you will be able to verify, the site is mainly a specific job search
> site for one individual, containing about 20 links and a few small JPGs
> - there's also a page with a larger JPG and a small music clip. I
> believe the entire content to be around 50kb. It has existed in much
> the same form for over 6 months with no problems yet suddenly you
> allege it has delivered 264MB in one day, which would equate to around
> 5000 users browsing the entire site!
>
> I have just had a very frustrating conversation with '[DELETED]' in
> your call centre who couldn't seem to understand that I can't make
> PlusNet a promise to reduce bandwidth in future when I have no idea how
> this situation came about in the first place. He admitted he knows
> nothing about websites but was unwilling to put me in touch with anyone
> who does - he was not prepared to accept that PlusNet's systems could
> possibly be wrong, but could not suggest what arrangements I could make
> to prevent it happening again. He was unwilling or unable to understand
> that, because making such a promise is a condition of restoration of
> service, I have no way forward and my website will remain inactive.
>
> Unless someone can inject a large dose of common sense to this issue
> very quickly I will have no option but to sign up with another ISP
> purely in order to restore my website.
>
> I look forward to your comments.

There are some free hosting sites out there, that would have nothing to do
with Plusnet. Or even one of the portals, like Yahoo groups, MSN
communities, or blogspot (by google). You could post your links on there.
Blog spot is the easiest one to use, and you can include pictures and links.
There are no bandwidth limits at all for these sites, as Yahoo & MSN are
advertising sponsered - so the more hits the better.

Yahoo, MSN and Blogspot are all very easy to set up. You can have it up and
running within 5 minutes.

**SS**

Steve wrote:

> Unless someone can inject a large dose of common sense to this issue
> very quickly I will have no option but to sign up with another ISP
> purely in order to restore my website.

You have already had a reply from Plusnet support - full marks to them
for replying so promptly and I hope that you follow their advice. It
would be useful if you could follow-up and explain what actually
happened to your site for others to note.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Colin Forrester <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> You have already had a reply from Plusnet support - full marks to them
> for replying so promptly

Hear, hear! Well done Bob from PN.

But what I'd like to see (Steve) is the chain of responses that you get
on the ticket you raised with the Support Desk. I've only ever raised
one ticket with them: I've never done it since. Within two responses
(of about 15) I felt like Victor Meldrew dealing with the spotty kid in
PC World. Of course, it was I, in the end, who felt like the ignorant
prat.

[I'm joking BTW: I don't really want you to waste yet more of your time
posting their responses to this group.]

Good luck
John

On 28 Apr 2006, John <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>[I'm joking BTW: I don't really want you to waste yet more of your time
>posting their responses to this group.]

Just a quick note of possible caution - posting whole tickets is frowned on
by Plus.Net - at the very least the names of PN staff should be removed as
PN regards the "contact us" tickets as private correspondence, and all of
the content of the web portal is deemed to be under their copyright. So
posting whole tickets might get some negative responses from them... I
noticed another thread where PN staff responded and did not point that
out. It's not a major issue to me - I can see pros and cons of posting
actual content from tickets, but accept staff names might be best kept a
initials only, lest there be some more formal response from PN to anyone
who did make such a posting. Peter M.

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, Colin Forrester wrote:

> Steve wrote:
>
> > Unless someone can inject a large dose of common sense to this
> > issue very quickly I will have no option but to sign up with
> > another ISP purely in order to restore my website.
>
> You have already had a reply from Plusnet support - full marks to
> them for replying so promptly and I hope that you follow their
> advice. It would be useful if you could follow-up and explain what
> actually happened to your site for others to note.

Well, yes, I suppose so - if those are the rules of engagement for
customers who have web pages there.

Speaking as someone with experience of administering a web server (in
the academic situation, admittedly), I'd have to say that if we found
a web page being unreasonably abused by a third party or parties, we
wouldn't blame it on the page owner (assuming that the page content
was otherwise in conformance with guidelines), but we would take
action ourselves to defend the server from the abusers.

I suppose it's one of the hazards of using one's "free" web space,
that the ISP is happiest if the web pages are of no interest to
anybody :-}

cheers

poster wrote:
> On 28 Apr 2006, John <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> [I'm joking BTW: I don't really want you to waste yet more of your time
>> posting their responses to this group.]
>
> Just a quick note of possible caution - posting whole tickets is frowned on
> by Plus.Net - at the very least the names of PN staff should be removed as
> PN regards the "contact us" tickets as private correspondence, and all of
> the content of the web portal is deemed to be under their copyright. So
> posting whole tickets might get some negative responses from them... I
> noticed another thread where PN staff responded and did not point that
> out. It's not a major issue to me - I can see pros and cons of posting
> actual content from tickets, but accept staff names might be best kept a
> initials only, lest there be some more formal response from PN to anyone
> who did make such a posting. Peter M.

Hi,

It's not too much of an issue posting ticket content, but you're right
in the fact that we would prefer that CS agents names are removed (which
was the case anyway in this instance).

I actually responded to the ticket so the ticket reply doesn't differ
too much to the one I posted here

Kind Regards,

--
|Bob Pullen Broadband Solutions for
|Training & Project Liaison Home & Business @
|PlusNet plc www.plus.net
+ ----- PlusNet - The smarter way to broadband ------

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
> Speaking as someone with experience of administering a web server (in
> the academic situation, admittedly), I'd have to say that if we found
> a web page being unreasonably abused by a third party or parties, we
> wouldn't blame it on the page owner (assuming that the page content
> was otherwise in conformance with guidelines), but we would take
> action ourselves to defend the server from the abusers.

I think you'll find most commercial hosting companies would do the same:
either that or - worse - charge you for the additional bandwidth.

Geoff

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 10:23:29 +0100, [Plusnet Support Team] said :-

>Steve wrote:
>> Anyone had this situation before? Logged on this morning and found my
>> site removed because I have allegedly exceeded my bandwidth allowance,
>> which appears to be 10MB per day.
>
>You have a 250MB/day bandwidth allowance so it appears that you have
>only just exceeded this.
>
>> Checked my email and sure enough, PN
>> are alleging I have used 264MB in the last 24 hours! What I have to do
>> is raise a ticket in which I detail the steps I've taken to prevent
>> this happening again.
>>
>> The problem is, my site is tiny - I think around 50kb total - and is
>> there purely to assist a former colleague with a job search by
>> providing links to possible opportunities on various job sites. That
>> being so, I can't see how this can have happened and therefore can't
>> promise it won't happen again, or detail steps I've taken to correct
>> the problem.
>
>The first thing I would suggest you do is activate your webstats:-
>https://portal.plus.net/my.html?GCs%...8lpWT1sxQov771
>
>This will allow you to see where certain hits to your site are
>originating from. It may be something as simple as another (very
>popular) site hotlinking to one or more of the images on your site. This
>would mean that whenever somebody browsed to the popular site, it would
>be your bandwidth used to deliver the images. Webstats will show whether
> or not this is the case.
>

So - you indefinately suspend a user's webspace because of no fault of
theirs ?