Bandwidth Monitoring

[Stellavision]

I had a surprise bill from my host yesterday saying that I had exceeded my 1000 Gb p/m allowance. I was surprised because my bandwidth usage in Cpanel suggests that I have never exceeded 500 Gb in a month.
After talking to my host they suggested that Cpanel monitoring is not very accurate and some traffic does not always get caught by Cpanel. There is a huge difference between the average 470 Gb I see and the 1000 Gb I am told is seen at the switch! Does this sound about right?
I need an accurate bandwidth measurement really, so if Cpanel is innacurate what other ways can I more accurately keep an eye on this. I did ask my host this yesterday but am still waiting for a reply.

[thewebhosting]

using Awstats (you can find this option in Web / Ftp Statistics) you can get the detailed information about the Unique visitors, Number of visits,Pages Hits, Bandwidth usage from particular IP addresses.

[cPanelDavidG]

using Awstats (you can find this option in Web / Ftp Statistics) you can get the detailed information about the Unique visitors, Number of visits,Pages Hits, Bandwidth usage from particular IP addresses.

That would not count traffic from services other than Apache and FTP.

To the original poster: by chance, have you recently uploaded much data? I know a general rule of thumb is that bandwidth consumed with actions related to maintaining a website (uploading files, accessing cPanel/WHM etc.) are not counted towards your bandwidth quota by cPanel/WHM.

However, if your hosting provider is using a third party application to monitor bandwidth, it is likely they can provide you with access to that data, perhaps via their billing interface.

[cpanelkenneth]

Another recommendation is to ask your webhost provider whether they are using a third party bandwidth monitoring service, rather than what comes with cPanel. If so, then the bandwidth meter displayed in the cPanel interface will be useless to you.