Billing FAQ

• When you change the billing method, the remaining amount that you paid for the subscription EIP is refunded.

  Only the amount that you paid is refunded to the original payment method. For information about how refunds are calculated, see Refund rules.

• After the conversion, the pay-by-bandwidth EIP is charged based on usage.

  Fee of a pay-by-bandwidth EIP = Bandwidth fee + EIP configuration fee (public IP address retention fee)

Example: You have a subscription EIP in the China (Beijing) region that uses a BGP (Multi-ISP) line and has a maximum bandwidth of 300 Mbps. The EIP is not associated with any cloud resources. At 08:15:00 on November 20, 2024, you convert this subscription EIP to a EIP EIP. After the conversion, you release the EIP at 22:30:00 on November 20, 2024. You will receive a bill for the pay-as-you-go EIP on November 21, 2024. The fee of the pay-as-you-go EIP for November 20, 2024 is calculated as follows:

The prices in this example are for reference only. For actual prices, see the console.

Account requirements

• Both the source and target Alibaba Cloud accounts must be registered on the China site and have completed real-name registration.

• If the source account is registered under an enterprise, the target account must also be registered under an enterprise with the same name.

  For example, if the source account is registered under Company A, the target account must also be registered under Company A.

  To change the enterprise entity or update the name for an Alibaba Cloud account that has completed enterprise real-name registration, see Change Enterprise Entity.

• If the source account is registered to an individual, the target account can be registered to either an individual or an enterprise, and the names do not need to match. The following rules apply:

  • For example, a source account registered under Name A can transfer resources to only one of multiple target accounts registered under different names, such as B, C, or D.

  • For example, if both the source account and multiple target accounts are registered under the same name, the source account can transfer resources to all of them.

• Transfers are not supported for accounts from resellers or virtual operators.

• The source account and the target account cannot be the same account.

• Neither the source nor the target account can be pending cancellation or frozen.

• Neither the source account nor the target account can be a managed account.

  For accounts in a financial hosting relationship, the managing account (host) can participate in transfers, but the managed account cannot. For example, if Account A delegates its financial management to Account B, Account B can transfer resources, but Account A cannot.

• Both the source account and the target account must have an available balance, including cash and credit line.

• If the target account already has pay-as-you-go resources, its available balance must be at least CNY 100.

EIP requirements

• You must convert a subscription EIP to pay-as-you-go before you can transfer it.

• Before the transfer, you must disassociate it from all associated cloud resources.

• The EIP cannot be under risk control or have overdue payments.

• An EIP can be transferred only five days after it was created or converted from a static public IP address.

• There must be no unpaid orders to convert the EIP's billing method to subscription.

Transfer rules

• Each EIP can be transferred only once. Proceed with caution.

• EIPs can be transferred only within the same region. Cross-region transfers are not supported.

• After the transfer, the total number of EIPs in the target account must not exceed its EIP quota.

• After the source account initiates the transfer, the target account must accept it within 24 hours. Otherwise, the transfer request automatically expires.

• While the EIP transfer is in progress, you cannot perform the following operations on the EIP: convert it to a subscription EIP, associate it with a cloud resource, resize it, change its billing method, or release it.

• The source account can cancel the transfer at any time before the target account accepts or rejects it.

• Pay-as-you-go EIPs:

  • You are charged an EIP configuration fee (public IP address retention fee) as soon as the EIP is created. EIPs allocated from a specified IP address pool are not subject to this fee.

  • When you associate an EIP with a resource, the EIP configuration fee (public IP address retention fee) is waived only if the EIP is directly associated with a VPC-type ECS instance or ECI instance, and your Alibaba Cloud account's (primary account) EIP quota is 2,000 or less.

  To avoid unnecessary charges, we recommend that you apply for EIPs only when you need them.

• Subscription EIPs: No EIP configuration fee (public IP address retention fee) is charged.

A sudden surge in EIP traffic can lead to higher fees. You can investigate the issue based on the following information:

Possible causes

• Business operations: Increased traffic due to system updates or business growth.

• System vulnerabilities: Flaws in your application that inadvertently generate a large volume of network requests.

• Malicious attacks or scanning: Increased traffic from malicious attacks, web crawlers, or other unauthorized access.

• Improper network configuration: Misconfigured rules for security groups or firewalls that allow a large number of unwanted requests.

Troubleshooting

1. Check monitoring data

   You can use CloudMonitor to view the data transfer and bandwidth usage of your EIP, and analyze the pattern of the abnormal traffic. For more information, see Monitoring and alerting.

   You can also take the following measures to more quickly and accurately identify abnormal traffic in the future:

   • Configure second-level monitoring: You can monitor real-time changes in your Internet traffic to adjust the EIP's maximum bandwidth in a timely manner.

   • Enable Internet traffic analysis: You can view information about top traffic consumers by analyzing communication data between your EIP and external IP addresses.

   • Create an alert rule for bandwidth usage: When an abnormal bandwidth spike occurs, CloudMonitor can send timely alerts, allowing you to investigate and resolve the issue promptly.

2. Locate the abnormal process

   • Locate with CloudMonitor: Use the Process Monitoring feature in CloudMonitor to identify the process consuming excessive network resources during the traffic surge.

   • Locate with network monitoring tools: Depending on the operating system of the server to which the EIP is associated, use the appropriate tools to view traffic usage and identify the process that is consuming network resources.

     • Linux systems: Use tools such as sar, iftop, or nethogs to check the network traffic load on your ECS instance. For more information, see Troubleshoot high network bandwidth usage on Linux instances.

     • Windows systems: Use built-in Microsoft tools such as Task Manager, Resource Monitor, Performance Monitor, Process Explorer, or Xperf (available in Windows Server 2008 and later) to analyze traffic usage. For more information, see Troubleshoot high network bandwidth usage on Windows instances.

3. Analyze log files

   Analyze server log files to identify the source and type of traffic requests.

   Command example: View server logs

   View logs in Linux

   • View Nginx access log: cat /var/log/nginx/access.log

   • View Apache access log: cat /var/log/apache2/access.log

   View logs in Windows

   The path for Nginx and Apache access logs varies based on your installation and configuration.

   • If the Nginx access log path is C:\Program Files\nginx\logs\access.log, use the following command: type "C:\Program Files\nginx\logs\access.log"

   • If the Apache access log path is C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.4\logs, use the following command: type "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.4\logs\access.log"

4. Check security group and firewall configurations

   Review your security group rules or firewall configurations to close unnecessary ports and services, and enforce strict access control.

   For information about how to configure a security group, see Add security group rules. For more customized or fine-grained access control, configure your system firewall as follows:

   • Example Linux firewall configuration: Block a suspicious IP address

     # View firewall rules (iptables)
     sudo iptables -L -n -v
     # Add a firewall rule to block a suspicious IP address
     sudo iptables -A INPUT -s <suspicious-ip> -j DROP

   • On a Windows system, you can configure firewall rules through the Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security interface.

5. Check your application

   Use antivirus software or security tools to scan for malware. Check for server vulnerabilities and promptly update your systems and software.

   You can use Alibaba Cloud Security Center to detect and block various security threats, including virus propagation, hacking, ransomware, vulnerability exploits, AccessKey pair leaks, and malicious cryptomining.