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CDN:Configure high bill alerts

Last Updated:Nov 08, 2023

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: high bills caused by attacks or attack-like activities

  • If an attack occurs, you are charged for the bandwidth resources 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.

Potential consequences: bills that are higher than expected

If your domain name is under attack or abused for data transmission, the bills may be higher than expected and your account balance may be exhausted.

CDN uses the pay-as-you-go billing method. In some cases, the service may not be suspended when the account balance reaches 0 due to different billing cycles (by hour, by day, or by month) or bill delays. Bills for CDN are generated 3 to 4 hours after each billing cycle ends. Overdue payments may occur, including those whose amount due is higher than the value specified in the grace period policy.

Alibaba Cloud CDN supports grace periods. If you have a grace period configured, Alibaba Cloud CDN is not suspended before the grace period ends. The grace period is determined based on your account credibility and purchase history. You can set the grace period to a period of time. The grace period is reset every month.

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 describes the features that can be used to manage network traffic.

Feature

Description

Bandwidth cap

If you want to restrict the amount of bandwidth resources that a domain name can consume, you can specify a bandwidth cap for the domain name. After the bandwidth of the domain name reaches the specified bandwidth cap, Alibaba Cloud CDN disables acceleration for the domain name and the domain name is resolved to an invalid address. This prevents unexpected high bills. For more information, see Configure bandwidth caps.

Bandwidth throttling

If the daily peak bandwidth of your domain name is greater than 10 Gbit/s and you want to throttle CDN bandwidth for the domain name, submit a ticket.

Important
  • Bandwidth throttling applies to the overall bandwidth of all services that are hosted by the domain name. To ensure the accuracy of bandwidth throttling, the bandwidth limit must be greater than or equal to 10 Gbit/s.

  • After the bandwidth limit such as 10 Gbit/s is reached, Alibaba Cloud CDN limits the bandwidth of the accelerated domain name. The response to all requests is slower, and packet loss may also occur.

  • Bandwidth throttling is triggered by the real-time monitoring data of the accelerated domain name, which has a delay of approximately 10 minutes. Therefore, bandwidth throttling starts approximately 10 minutes after the bandwidth limit is reached. In this case, the bandwidth of the accelerated domain name may exceed the limit.

Real-time monitoring

If you want to monitor the peak bandwidth of domain names in real time, you can use CloudMonitor. After the bandwidth of a domain name reaches the specified threshold, you are notified of the potential risks by text message, email, or DingTalk message. For more information, visit the product page of CloudMonitor.

Spending management and alerts

You can use the following features to monitor and limit the expenses of your Alibaba Cloud CDN service. To configure these features, move your pointer over Expenses in the top navigation bar of the Alibaba Cloud CDN console and select User Center.

  • Low capacity alerts: If you enable this feature, Alibaba Cloud CDN sends an alert when the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account is less than the alert threshold that you specified.

  • Grace period: If you disable this feature, Alibaba Cloud CDN immediately stops running after a payment becomes overdue to prevent high overdue payments.

  • High bill alerts: If you enable this feature, Alibaba Cloud CDN sends an alert by text message when a daily bill exceeds the alert threshold that you specified.

Note

To ensure the integrity of the statistics and the accuracy of the bills, Alibaba Cloud CDN issues the bill approximately 3 hours after a billing cycle ends. The point in time at which the relevant fees are deducted from your account balance may be later than the point in time at which the resources are consumed within the billing cycle. Alibaba Cloud CDN is a distributed service. Therefore, Alibaba Cloud does not provide the consumption details of Alibaba Cloud CDN resources in bills. Other CDN providers adopt a similar approach.