While there are many hosting functions which you can set-up, leave and they will look after themselves, bandwidth is not one such element of hosting which can be left. You need to continually monitor what bandwidth is being used, as you may find some anomalies in your visitors. But surely a visitor is there to look at your site?

Even though you should be safe in the knowledge that all visitors to your site are there to check out what you have to offer, this is not always the case. Many other sites and internet users can “piggy back” your hosting resources in many ways, and bleed you dry of bandwidth. Some of the more common occurrences are :-

“Piggy Backing” onto your pictures / graphics

If you constantly check your sites hits, where they came from and which pages were popular, you may well pick up on trends. Many other sites will use your pictures, but rather than taking a copy and hosting the pictures themselves they may embed your URL into their site. This uses your bandwidth every time someone logs onto their site, and for some of the more popular sites it can mount up.

Using your services

If you have something like a proxy site, or a site which offers an interesting search facility you may be the subject of “piggy backing” yet again. By embedding your code, or linking directly to your site, businesses such as search engines can actually use your bandwidth for search facilities for their customers.

These are just two of the ways in which other webmasters can actually use your bandwidth resources for their own ends. While it is not illegal as such, it can prove very expensive for you if you need to increase your bandwidth to another level. Even today, it can be very expensive to purchase additional bandwidth at short notice. Many hosts will actually push you to upgrade your package, offering more bandwidth, but at a potentially much higher cost.