SHOUTcast

[Jonny]

Im going to buy a server off you in the near future. I plan to use it to resell the space and start a web hosting business. I also plan to offer other services such as shoutcast hosting. Do you allow streaming from your servers? Some hosts believe this is a 'security risk'.

Ragards,
Jonny

[SH-Andre]

Hi Jonny,

We do indeed allow streaming. I believe that many other hosts call streaming media a security risk as excuse to not allow it, since it uses a lot of bandwidth (thus it costs them more). We don't believe in such excuses, we simply allow it.

Please note that things such as IRC do cause a risk, so we don't allow any IRC connectivity on our network.

[Jonny]

Yes, IRC can cause security risks, plus i have no needs to run an IRC. What would happen if a client setup and IRC, plus would they be able to do this without SSH/root access?

[SH-Andre]

Yes they can do that without root access, and a smart scripter could even do it without SSH (using complicated PHP scripts). Nevertheless, with our security package (as described by email and in your other thread) we would take away this risk because we will make it impossible for a customer to compile an IRC application (and other harmful applications), and also with this security package PHP will be a lot more secure (using mod_security).

Without this module, it's basically possible for a scripter to use an SSH environment, even if he doesn't have any SSH access. So it's essential to take away a risk like that.

[SH-Andre]

Additionally: I forgot to add: but IRC ports are also blocked in our routers. So unless if the customer would use an 'uncommon' IRC port, it won't be possible to connect to IRC.

[Jonny]

Would you suspend my whole server if an IRC was found or would you inform me to remove the cutomers IRC or remove the customer completly

[SH-Andre]

The only occasion when we would suspend your whole server rightaway would be if you would be doing something illegal or strictly against our policies (intentionally spamming for instance).

In any other situation we will not suspend your server until we have worked it out with you. Basically, if you don't do anything against our policies, we will never touch your server at all. Additionally we understand that one of your own customers could be a troublemaker, so we will first give you the oppurtunity to fix that.

Situations where we suspend a server are rare, unless we really have to, we won't do that.