Question

Do Load Balancers connected to Droplets via Private IP still count towards bandwidth quota?

Posted on June 26, 2018
Billing Load Balancing Networking
Asked by fiftylinesofcode

From what I’ve read, it’s only traffic from a Public IP address that counts towards the bandwidth quota and any communication between servers via Private IP isn’t counted.

If my Digital Ocean Load Balancer is connecting to my Droplets via their Private IP addresses (which it does automatically if Private IPs are enabled on the Droplets), and my Public IP addresses are basically ignored (all traffic goes through Load Balancer), does that mean I practically have unlimited bandwidth?

Thank you for any clarification.

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Rafael Rosa

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 26, 2018

Accepted Answer

Hello,

There’s some nuance there. Load Balancers are what we classify as bandwidth neutral, they don’t change your bandwidth allowances up or down, but the public transfers from a Load Balancer, which indirectly come from the backend droplets, will be counted towards your limit.

For example, let’s say that your web app droplets talk with the LB and another database droplet using private networks. The traffic between the web app and the database won’t be counted at all, but the traffic that goes out from the LB came originally from the web app droplets, and that traffic will be counted.

Right now, June 2018, due to technical limitations we are not counting the public LB traffic, so your usage will be lower by the amount of the LB transfer, but it will be counted very soon.

I hope I clarified your question.

Cheers