Network sins: Bandwidth theft

Many times people commit crimes without being fully aware of committing the crime. One of the classic cases for such offenses is the case of bandwidth theft. In fact, it can be said that many of the website owners commit this sin, or at least have committed it in the past. The population of sinners is divided into two groups - the inexperienced website owners who are not aware of the problematic nature of their actions, and the website owners who are well aware of the consequences of their actions, but they prefer to hurt others in order to make a little profit for themselves.

So what exactly is "bandwidth theft"? First of all - this is theft. When a person takes something that does not belong to him, without permission and without the knowledge of the legal owner of the object. Just stealing. In order to clarify the essence of the offense, it is necessary to clarify a number of simple technical concepts.

Communication to the Internet is done over telephone lines or other communication cables. The data transfer speed on these cables is not infinite - each cable has a certain limit of data that it can transfer at a given time. If we try to transfer an amount of data greater than the cable's capacity, the data transfer speed will decrease. The data transfer rate at which a communication line can work is its "bandwidth".

When we surf the Internet, our computer sends and receives information from websites. In order to allow the transmission of this information, and thus to allow access to their website, website owners must purchase a certain bandwidth from the Internet providers. That is, for a monthly fee, the provider allows the website to send and receive information in a certain volume. Let's say I purchased 3 GB per month for my website. This means that the total size of files (images, sound or downloadable files) moving to or from my site per month must be less than 3 GB.

What happens if the amount of data sent exceeds the allowed limit for that month? Here it depends on the policy of the Internet provider. Most ISPs just charge more for the exceptions. On rare occasions the internet providers will simply block the line until the beginning of the next month - which will effectively prevent any access to the website for several days. In short - if my site becomes more and more popular and many surfers come to it and download information, the bandwidth utilization increases, and I will have to pay more. So where is the problem?

Most website owners will be happy to pay more for a wider bandwidth, if this means that the site becomes popular - this popularity is, in most cases, their goal. But, no one wants to pay for bandwidth they don't use.

When we surf to a certain website that contains images, those images should be found on the server that contains the website, and reach our computer from there using the "bandwidth" of that website. Sometimes website owners prefer not to place images on their server, but to direct the surfers to identical or similar images that are on another server on the Internet. If the images are not really on the server of the site we are surfing to, but on the server of another site, the bandwidth of the other site will be used, without us having surfed to it at all. It is important to note that the surfers are not at all aware that the image is on another server! On the computer screen the image will look as if it is on the website we surfed to!

So what does all this mean? This means that website owners, in order to save on the utilization of their bandwidth, refer surfers to images hosted on other websites, without informing them that they are being redirected to another website, and without informing the other website that surfers are being redirected to. Those other sites are not getting the exposure they are interested in, but their bandwidth is being used up and at the end of the month they will have to pay the internet providers for it. This is theft for everything.

Although one small image will not have such a drastic effect on the bandwidth utilization of a certain site, when hundreds or thousands of surfers access the site every month - the effect may be very large.

One must differentiate between a link to an image or a file from another site (in fact - stealing its bandwidth), and a link to another web page, on another site (such as the links at the bottom of this article). Such a link refers the surfer to the other site knowingly, and the other site gets more exposure. This is perfectly fine, because in the end - every website owner wants more surfers to visit him. A website owner who is not interested in this, it is better for him to take the website off the network completely.

Linking to images, sound files, videos or downloadable files from other websites without their permission - is bandwidth theft and it costs other people a lot of money. What to do if you have a website and you want to put pictures or files on it? Upload the images and files to your server. Don't make someone else pay for you.