Bandwidth usage not reduced

A HTTP cache like LScache can’t reduce bandwith. It reduces only the load on your server, so there is no lack of caching. The possible reason of your issue may caused by cache warmup, because every warmup request costs bandwith, so if you want to reduce bandwith you must dispense with warmup or change hosting provider.

Hi,

from what I see, CacheWall looks like some kind of Varnish mod , depends on where is the cache server located or ccalculated , if it acts like CDN or remote server , it could show as reduce BW on origin

while on other hand , LScache is stored and served from your origin directly , you can set up QUIC cloud CDN to store cache on CDN

Best regards,

@serpentdriver
How do I dispense with warmup?

@qtwrk

From what I understood, a caching plugin caches static resources so they don’t have to be requested from the server every time, so that when a customer accesses my website, the static resources are not requested from the server but pulled from the cache, hence saving the bandwidth and delivering faster content to the customer.

But you’re saying that in order to pull resources from the cache it is used the same exact bandwidth that if the resource was not pulled from the cache but live from the server, so what is the point of this? Seems very useless

How do I dispense with warmup?

Don’t run crawler to warmup the cache.

From what I understood, a caching plugin caches static resources

You talk about browser cache, that caches static sources like CSS,JS,Images and so on and stores cached files on client machine. For this you don’t need any plugin, because it is a basic function of each browser. LScache is a server side HTTP cache and stores dynamically generated content (the output) as static files on the server.
You understand the difference?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by serpentdriver.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by serpentdriver.

@serpentdriver
Thank you for your help first of all. I appreciate it!

Don’t run crawler to warmup the cache.

1) Is this a setting in the LSCache plugin on wordpress?

2) Could you please explain me what this will do exactly and if there’s any side-effect / issue? I feel like I’m moving blind here.

3) What is a crawler? I thought a crawler was something like GoogleBot, so I’m a little bit confused here. Our website is on a shared server, I don’t think we’ve much control over the server other than what we can do on cPanel.

You talk about browser cache, that caches static sources like CSS,JS,Images and so on and stores cached files on client machine. For this you don’t need any plugin, because it is a basic function of each browser. LScache is a server side HTTP cache and stores dynamically generated content (the output) as static files on the server.

I didn’t know about the difference, I thought only 1 cache existed and that was about static resources, and that what was a caching plugin was for.

My website is a simple blog. There’s only blog articles and there is no dynamic content. Unless dynamically generated content means something different. How is it that with Cachewall I had no bandwidth issues and as soon as we switched to LScache (not our choice just the shared hosting we’re in moved us our server) we’re having the bandwidth problem?

I don’t want to move to VPS/cloud and pay 12x times what I am paying now on a shared hosting if there’s a solution here.

1) Is this a setting in the LSCache plugin on wordpress?

YES ??

1) and 2)

Cache plugin for WP has a function to warmup the cache and this function is a crawler, but this crawler doesn’t index content. It simulates requests like users do if they visit your page. If your page isn’t cached it must be requested first to cache it, but if the cache is already warmuped by this crawler your visitors get the advantages of the cache without loading each URL first.

You don’t have to manage anything on your server and nothing has to be configured on this server. Run crawler, that’s it. You can use this crawler, but you don’t must to get cache plugin work.

Cachewall is a extension for Varnish. Varnish is similiar to LScache, but you don’t have to care about it. You have LScache and not Varnish.

If you have WordPress each content is dynamic like almost all other CMS. And again, only sources like CSS, Javascript, Images, … are static sources. Dynamically generated content is cached by LScache on your server, static sources are cached by the browser. This is the difference.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by serpentdriver.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by serpentdriver.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by serpentdriver.

Hi
@serpentdriver
Thank you for your reply.

Could you please tell me exactly what setting I should change in LSCache? I have been looking around and haven’t found anything about warming up. Is it supposed to be here?
https://snipboard.io/M9nIuW.jpg

Also
@qtwrk
Could you please jump in the conversation?
I have been chatting with my hosting for 24 hours and they don’t seem able to do anything about LSCache to reduce the bandwidth in the was that Cachewall was doing. It may be because they would like me to jump on a Cloud server and pay 10x times more, or because they’re unable or “outside their scope of work” to help a customer with LScache settings.

Documentation is your friend:

https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/crawler/

Ok thanks,
I actually did look that but found no mention of the word “warming up”
https://snipboard.io/Y91RFz.jpg

https://blog.litespeedtech.com/2017/06/14/wpw-crawl-your-site-make-it-fly/

Hi @serpentdriver
and thanks for sticking with me!

I asked my hosting and this is their reply:

Regarding your question about warming up the cache, that is a setting most services have. A warm cache already contains your data, in this case, objects and pages. When these are freshly stored in your cache, they can be served by LiteSpeed Web Server directly. This prevents PHP from being invoked and hitting the application's backend, meaning your users can access these objects and pages faster. The way the feature works is a crawler goes through your entire website on a regular basis so whenever a visitor accesses a page, the same can be already cached. Unfortunately, the said function is not yet enabled on our shared hosting as the same utilizes quite a lot of resources and it would simply not be beneficial as the entire server's performance would degrade.

My hosting is saying that AWstats shows that I have 3x times more hits in December/January/February than I had in September/October/November and this is why the bandwidth usage is going up. But I just checked Google Analytics and my traffic and pageviews are identical in December/January/February to what they were in September/October/November.

They swapped Cachewall with Litespeed at the beginning of December, so I am telling them that the reason why they see 3x hits is exactly because they swapped cachewall with litespeed. I think that Cachewall was reducing the number of hits recorded in Awstats, by serving cached content.

I think that given that everything on my website is identical to before and the only variable changed has been Cachewall > Litespeed, the issue must be this.

Of course another option would be that in the exact moment as they put me on a new server (beginning of December) although traffic on our website is the same, something else happened at the same exact time – What a coincidence that would be – (maybe a DDOS attack? but it’s a shared server so everyone should have this problem – Maybe a lot of hotlinking? – I do have hotlink disabled but some find a work-around) that 3x the hits on the server. I think it would be too much of a coincidence.

Any idea or insight would be appreciated ??
Thanks!

Your hosting and the restricted limits are very very very very strange and not typical for shared hosting. For testing and development I have 2 shared hostings with almost no limits, so my advice is: Change your hosting!

Would you tell me what you pay for your hosting monthly?

I’m paying around $20 per month.
This is the hosting I am using now:
https://url.dev/baM8355/
I have been with them for about 18 months.

Before this I have been with this hosting:
https://url.dev/MtCKbJS/
for about a couple of months but then I switched because their support took initiative and make changes on my account without my permission in a few occasion and I didn’t feel comfortable there anymore.

Before this I have been with this hosting for 5-6 years
https://url.dev/x45M1uZ/
Everything was perfect with this hosting and never had any bandwidth issue or notification. Unfortunately I had to drop this hosting because at some point, more or less at the time as they were acquired by a larger company, they completely removed the “Support Ticket” system from their dashboard, and the only way to contact them was thru chat, and having a chat with their team is like talking to a plant. One day there was 1 problem, and they were impossible to reach via support, chat was useless, phone was useless, and my website was down for about a week, at which point, out of desperation I just changed hosting and moved away.

Sometimes I think about just getting a cloud server or vps, but I just don’t see enough benefits that make me feel like doing this move. It’s not even that much about the money, just it seems useless and in fact much more troublesome (I would have to take care of many more things than now unless I take it fully managed) And even then, what benefits am I gonna get exactly?
– Is my website gonna load faster? No, according to them.
– Is it gonna have less disruptions? Even now I don’t have disruptions, so probably irrelevant difference.
– Is it gonna be safer? Well, now my site is together with many others on a server that is constantly monitored. I feel that is safer because if someone wanted to attack me they wouldn’t be able to single me out. So I actually feel safer in the crowd.
– People say: You will have more control over your server, do I really need it? I just use cPanel to check my emails, barely log in File Manager once per year. I don’t need any control or special feature, just a blog that loads to people so they can read it.

Hi
I talked to a2hosting and they are not a good fit for us. Maybe some alternatives?

Btw our hosting is saying that the change from Cachewall into Litespeed is not connected with the bandwidth problem. They say it’s a coincidence that my bandwidth went 2x up after changing from cachewall to litespeed.

What other reason could be?

I do have hotlinking enabled, although sometimes I still find people that manage to hotlink my images. Maybe that could be a reason?

# Prevent Hotlinking
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?mywebsite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?bing.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yahoo.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg)$ [NC,R,L]
# End

Or some bad bots crawling my site non stop?

I asked them to do a root cause analysis but they won’t. What could be?

Maybe some alternatives?

No, sorry! I am out….