Bandwidth Spikes

Overview

If you are getting a massive ping loss when pinging the main server IP, there is a high chance that someone is using up all the available bandwidth.

The first thing to determine is whether the transfers are primarily inbound (to the server) or outbound (from the server). The chances are that if is one or the other (and not both) that it is some kind of attack. If it is in both directions, it could be a legitimate high traffic situation but you still might need drastic action to stop all other VPS users from being affected.

Ask the datacentre

The first thing to do is to check on a datacentre control panel to see if bandwidth graphs are available. If they are, you should be able to determine the direction of the traffic. If there are no graphs, please ring up the datacentre to see what's going on and if they can provide any advice.

It is usually possible for a datacentre to null route an IP address (i.e. make all its traffic go nowhere).