I am hosting a web application that serves static html pages that are refreshed at various intervals. Some as often as every 30 secs. I currently have numerous (hundreds) of unique pages that are accessed via 300 unique subdomains. Some of my clients have at most 50 visitors to their unique page(s) and need refreshes every 30 secs, without problems. Other clients have up to a 1000 or more visitors to their page(s). These clients are reducing the performance of my server.
There was no predefined limit upon signup, but I now need to impose such a limit to remain afloat financially.
To do this, I would like to define a finite number of connections allowed for each individual subdomain in my hosting account. Connections attempted out of range of this finite value should either be rejected or redirected. I have full access to .htaccess and php.ini.
Does my solution seem feasible? If so, can you point me to an example or guide to implement this or any other material that may help me in my problem?
I am not sure what control you have with 1and1 for installing modules for Apache or what versions/modules you currently have running but I think you are asking to be able to limit resources on a per virtual host basis, if this is the case maybe https://serverfault.com/questions/48843/apache-bandwidth-limiting-based-on-url will be of use.