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, you may receive bills that are higher than expected.

Potential risks

  • If an attack occurs, you are charged for the bandwidth resources of Alibaba Cloud CDN and data transfer.
  • If your domain name is abused for data transmission, high bandwidth values or traffic spikes may occur. This is similar to an attack, and you are charged for bandwidth resources and data transfer.

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.

The following table lists the features that can be used to manage network traffic.
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 you want to throttle bandwidth for Alibaba Cloud CDN, you can submit a ticket.
Notice After a bandwidth value reaches the specified threshold, the data transfer rate is throttled 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.
  • Low balance alert: After this feature is enabled, notifications are sent to you through text messages if the balance in your Alibaba Cloud account drops below a specified value.
  • Credit: After this feature is disabled, Alibaba Cloud CDN stops running immediately after an overdue payment occurs.
  • High bill alert: After this feature is enabled, notifications are sent to you through text messages if a daily bill reaches a specified amount.
Note To ensure the integrity of the statistics and the accuracy of the bills, Alibaba Cloud CDN issues the bill about 3 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.