Cloud Data Transfer:FAQ

Does CDT support centralized billing for subscription services?

No. CDT aggregates Internet data transfers across Alibaba Cloud services and applies tiered pricing—the larger the transfer volume, the lower the unit price. CDT also supports pay-by-data-transfer metering for services that provide cross-region access. Only the pay-as-you-go billing method is supported.

Can data transfers incurred by Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access be billed based on tiered pricing?

No.

What is tiered pricing?

CDT Internet traffic uses tiered pricing based on cumulative usage. Usage from multiple services is aggregated and billed by region. Total cost equals the sum of each tier's usage multiplied by its unit price.

For more information, see Tiered cumulative billing method example.

Can I use data transfer plans to offset the fee of data transfers in CDT?

Data transfer plans can offset only Tier 1 (0 TB to 10 TB) data transfer fees.

Are CDT resource plans interchangeable with CDN resource plans or NAT gateway resource plans?

No.

• CDT resource plans and CDN resource plans are calculated independently and do not affect each other. A CDT resource plan offsets only CDT Internet BGP (Multi-ISP) line data transfer fees.

• NAT gateways have their own separate resource plans, which cannot be offset by using CDT resource plans. For information about purchasing a NAT gateway resource plan, see the NAT Gateway documentation.

Why do CDT resource plans have different prices in different regions?

CDT resource plan prices are based on the difference in the Internet data transfer unit price of each region. For example, for the BGP (Multi-ISP) line, the Tier 1 (0 TB to 10 TB) unit price is CNY 0.80/GB in the Chinese mainland and CNY 0.7/GB in the Asia Pacific region. As a result, resource plans in the Asia Pacific region are cheaper than those in the Chinese mainland.

What services does the CDT resource plan cdt_Freetierbag_dp_intl apply to?

The resource plan offsets only the outbound Internet traffic generated by Function Compute instances.

Can Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) be disabled or closed?

Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) cannot be disabled or closed. CDT is a centralized billing service for cloud network bandwidth. After your services are upgraded to CDT billing, all existing and new pay-by-data-transfer instances are billed and invoiced through CDT, while pay-by-bandwidth instances continue to be billed through their original cloud services. To stop incurring CDT charges, stop using the corresponding pay-as-you-go services.

Does CDT support features such as throttling, instance upgrading, and instance downgrading?

No. CDT handles only centralized billing; resource management features such as bandwidth limits remain with the individual Alibaba Cloud services. After CDT takes effect, the maximum public bandwidth of each service remains unchanged.

Can I turn off the Internet data transfer quota exhaustion notification for CDT?

Currently, there is no separate setting for turning off notifications for CDT, including the Internet data transfer quota exhaustion notification and other CDT notification messages. To stop receiving this type of message, you can only remove yourself as a contact for message notifications. Note that doing so stops all Alibaba Cloud notifications from being delivered to you, not just CDT notifications.

Will original Alibaba Cloud services continue to generate bills after CDT is activated?

After CDT is activated, CDT centrally bills data transfer fees, while the original Alibaba Cloud services continue to generate other bills such as bandwidth, instance usage, configuration, and IP reservation fees.

How do I check the Internet traffic consumption details of my CDT resource plan and identify the corresponding ECS instance or IP address?

Go to the Resource Plans - Details page in the Expenses and Costs console to view the instances that are being offset by your resource plan. Use this information to identify the corresponding ECS instance and IP address.

If your CDT bill shows a fee of 0 but the resource plan usage is not 0, this means the fee has already been automatically offset by your resource plan. You can check the exact consumption details on the page above.

How do I query the bills of monthly free 220 GB Internet data transfers?

1. Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.

2. In the left-side navigation pane of the Expenses and Costs console, choose Bill > Bill Details.

3. On the Bill Details page, select Cloud Data Transfer from the Product Name drop-down list, select cloud data transfer-internet from the Commodity Name drop-down list, and click Search.

   In the CDT Internet data transfer bills, the unit price of the monthly free 220 GB is 0. Transfers that exceed the monthly quota are billed based on CDT tiered pricing.

   Important

   220 GB Internet data transfers per month consist of two parts:

   • 20 GB per month: can be used in regions in the Chinese mainland.

   • 200 GB per month: can be used only in regions outside the Chinese mainland.

Why is the free quota outside the Chinese mainland used up early in the month?

This can happen because your business traffic spiked.

To check your usage:

• Log on to the Expenses and Costs console.

• In the left-side navigation pane of the Expenses and Costs console, choose Bill > Bill Details.

• On the Bill Details page, select Cloud Data Transfer from the Product Name drop-down list, select cloud data transfer-internet or cloud data transfer-cross-region from the Commodity Name drop-down list, and set the bill date range.

• If the usage amount is not directly visible, scroll the table to the right to view the Usage Information column, or export the results as a CSV file for further analysis.

Why did my CDT bill increase month-over-month, or why did I incur an unusually high fee yesterday?

To troubleshoot a month-over-month fee increase, check the bill details of the last two months, paying particular attention to changes in the Internet data transfer fee for elastic IP address (EIP), and confirm whether your business traffic has grown accordingly.

To troubleshoot an unusually high fee that was generated yesterday, identify the specific instance in the bill that generated the fee (for example, an ECS instance associated with an EIP), and confirm whether that instance had a sudden traffic spike. To review your traffic in detail, use the Network Intelligence Service (NIS) traffic analyzer.

A common scenario that generates a new charge item: if you change a fixed bandwidth plan to pay-by-data-transfer billing, the system starts to charge you based on actual outbound data transfer, which can result in a new charge item on your bill.