Hi Guys, I started a website recently that used the ebay API, and it's been a dog on the bandwidth. I contacted my host and he told me that I have used my bandwidth through externally hosted images... Is this normal? I was under the impression that a image hosted elsewhere (like ebay provide) will use their own bandwidth when downloading the image and not touch yours. Thanks, John
Yes, it's generally true that images will be pulled directly from the source that is hosting them. It might help to run some of your pages through an analyzer like Webpage Test to see what is happening: http://www.webpagetest.org/
Yes! Since your website is pulling images from another external source it is eating up your bandwidth.
Ghan was right on his comment, it is some kind like data transfer that between both party. If you hosted an image and your visitor will pulling your bandwidth whenever they are downloading the images.
that is complete BS, the whole meaning of "externally hosted" means they are not hosted at your server, they can not be downloaded from your server (to use its bandwidth) because they are just not on your server! what could rather happens if you are switching from 5-page site to a 100's page site lots of traffic (including bots), that together with frequent ebay API calls might be quite an increase in bandwidth. However why does it worry you? Most of the hosting packages nowadays come with unlimited bandwidth