Hosting question
 

Before I totally go off on someone, please let me know if what I am asking for is reasonable. They why I wish to is irrelevant.

Host is dedicated, X amount gigs a month before overages.
I want them to cap it at X gigs (point of overages).
When cap is hit, redirect all traffic to a url of my choice. I will pay for whatever that costs bandwidth wise.

Is this an unreasonable request?
Is it complicated?
Should any quasi non moron tech guy handle this normally?

I am 100% sure it can be done, however, Ive never heard of any host doing so.

What if the redirect crap was on my dedicated? So I would still be paying for the traffic to that one page.

Cmon I know freehosts do this all the damn time.

If he can't pull that off, I can set that up for you.

Any script can be made. If you have root access to the server, and the server has monitoring scripts, you can incorporate these scripts to and have your software print a redirecting index / or use apache to redirect once bandwidth has reached a certain pont.

Just like a script that clears error logs once it reaches 500mb's.

Contact woj at www.wojfun.com , Im sure he can help.

I will prolly be switching from them here shortly when this billing cycle is over. I will request spams then.

For the time being let me know this process, ect. Do so and you may get an edge when I do switch.

Depends on how your host measures traffic.. Then they'd have to code a script our whatnot to check that measurment every X period, and if measurement > than your commit, put a .htaccess redirect, or whatever you wanted really.

Totally depends on how the host measures traffic. Some would be able to do this fairly easily, and some wouldn't have access to the data readily.

We I suppose would do it, but we would charge normal development time for the script to do it that interfaced with our billing system to get the GB total for the box. Perhaps there is a host somewhere that would toss it together for free.

Of course, you could just get any programmer to look at local traffic counters on the box (via a number of methods) and just do it all yourself. This is probably your best option honestly, as your solution would be semi-portable host to host.

-Phil

One of the easiest ways to implement this is with mod_throttle for Apache:

http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/

Actually, if your server has a decent control panel it's easy. cPanel for example will suspend your account once X gigs is reached, the suspended page can be a redirect.

Command in cpanel please?

Log into WHM > Account Functions > Modify Suspended Account Page

I would just do it manually ... have a thing in apache config so that when I'm about to go over have a RewriteRule that points everything to one page ...

I do not think this will work Key. I believe the bandwidth exceeded page will only kick in on a virtual account not on a server. There is no place to set a bandwidth cap in WHM for the box.

Modifying the bandwidth exceed page will affect all accounts on the box that exceed their bandwidth for the month.

I suggest you manually redirect once 90% of your bandwidth allocation has been reached. This will allow for incidentals on the affected box and redirect most of your traffic to your backup/next box in your daisy chain.

we can do it contact me

it definately can be done if you are on a dedicated box!

thank you
Avion