This topic describes the causes of unexpected high bills and the solutions to them. If your domain name is vulnerable to attacks or is abused for data transmission, high bandwidth values or traffic spikes may occur. In this case, your business may be exposed to potential risks.
Risk 1: Domain names may be added to the sandbox
For more information about the sandbox, see Introduction to sandboxes.
Alibaba Cloud CDN provides content delivery for thousands of accelerated domain names. By default, Alibaba Cloud CDN does not provide protection against attacks. If an accelerated domain name is under attack, Alibaba Cloud CDN has the right to add the attacked domain name to a sandbox based on factors such as the service status of the domain name and the impact of the attack. This ensures that the CDN service of other users can work as expected. If the attack is severe, other accelerated domain names under the same account are also added to the sandbox, and the addition of new domain names to the account is restricted. After an accelerated domain name is added to a sandbox, the CDN service is not guaranteed, and the domain name may be unavailable for a period of time.
Risk 2: high bills caused by attacks or attack-like activities
For more information about the high bills caused by attacks or attack-like activities, see Configure high bill alerts.
- If an attack or data transmission abusing occurs, you are charged for the bandwidth resources of Alibaba Cloud CDN and data transfer.
- If your domain name is under attack or abused for data transmission, the bills may be higher than expected, your account balance may be exhausted, and your account may be suspended due to overdue payments.
Solutions
To ensure that Alibaba Cloud CDN runs as expected and prevent unexpected high bills, we recommend that you enable security features to manage network traffic. For more information, see the product page of Anti-DDoS.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth cap | If you want to limit the amount of bandwidth resources that a domain name can consume, you can set a bandwidth cap for the domain name. After a bandwidth value reaches the specified bandwidth cap, Alibaba Cloud CDN disables acceleration for the domain name and requests destined for the domain name are directly sent to the origin server. For more information, see Configure a bandwidth cap. |
| Bandwidth throttling | If your daily peak bandwidth of greater than 10 Gbit/s can be met and you want to throttle bandwidth for Alibaba Cloud CDN, you can Submit a ticket. Important After a bandwidth value reaches the specified threshold, users access your website slower than before and packet loss may occur. |
| Real-time monitoring | If you want to monitor the peak bandwidth values of a domain name in real time, you can use CloudMonitor. After a bandwidth value reaches the specified threshold, notifications are sent to the administrator of your Alibaba Cloud CDN service through text messages, emails, or DingTalk messages. This alerts you of potential risks. For more information, see the product page of CloudMonitor. |
| Spending management and alerts | You can use the following features to monitor and control the expenses of your Alibaba Cloud CDN service. To configure these features, move your pointer over Expenses in the top navigation bar of the console and select User Center.
Note To ensure the integrity of the statistics and the accuracy of the bills, Alibaba Cloud CDN issues the bill about three hours after a billing cycle ends. Therefore, the time when the relevant fees are deducted from your account balance may be later than the time when the resources are consumed within the billing cycle. Alibaba Cloud does not provide consumption details of CDN resources in bills because Alibaba Cloud CDN is a distributed service. Other CDN providers adopt similar approaches. |