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I just had a look through their ToS for the catch. For the most part it's reasonable, but there's a freaking litany of reasonable things you're not allowed to

I just had a look through their ToS for the catch. For the most part it's reasonable, but there's a freaking litany of reasonable things you're not allowed to run, including IRC, audio/video streaming, game servers, and so on. Why on earth do you sell me X block of resources for Y$/month if you're going to tell me what I can and can't do with them? Surely unreasonable use would be covered by resource limits already in place?

smarx007 10y ago
There are mainly 2 reasons: * they oversell, so they assume that only small fraction of web servers will consume 100% of resources, while almost every torrent client will consume 100% of the bandwidth. There is nothing wrong with overselling hosting within a reasonable margin, but most of the people here want to run more than a LAMP stack on the server. * they get too much admin overhead replying to Tor "abuse" letters etc., so they just decided to deal with it in the simplest way possible. I guess both factors contribute equally.
- Laforet 10y ago
  Most VPS providers already limit the options to run Tor nodes or SMTP servers in one way or another. However forbidding things like IRC and audio streaming is quite unusual and I wonder how oversubscribed their bandwidth must be on these hosts. I doubt CPU or RAM allocation is the issue here given AWS already have a good CPU time credit system to manage it.
  - brianmurphy 10y ago
    In the old days (90s-2000s), allowing IRC bots opened yourself to being a DoS target and general receiver of harassment complaints from perceived social abuses that happened in the chat rooms. I assume things haven't changed that much.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      All major IRC networks hide your IP address when you connect now (mode +x), but I bet the perception still exists. Most of these ToS'es are thoughtless copypasta from other services.. every now and then there's a Show HN from a new hosting company that has absurd nonsense in their terms, and the creator gets suitably chastised for it.

smarx007 10y ago

There are mainly 2 reasons: * they oversell, so they assume that only small fraction of web servers will consume 100% of resources, while almost every torrent client will consume 100% of the bandwidth. There is nothing wrong with overselling hosting within a reasonable margin, but most of the people here want to run more than a LAMP stack on the server. * they get too much admin overhead replying to Tor "abuse" letters etc., so they just decided to deal with it in the simplest way possible. I guess both factors contribute equally.

Laforet 10y ago
Most VPS providers already limit the options to run Tor nodes or SMTP servers in one way or another. However forbidding things like IRC and audio streaming is quite unusual and I wonder how oversubscribed their bandwidth must be on these hosts. I doubt CPU or RAM allocation is the issue here given AWS already have a good CPU time credit system to manage it.
- brianmurphy 10y ago
  In the old days (90s-2000s), allowing IRC bots opened yourself to being a DoS target and general receiver of harassment complaints from perceived social abuses that happened in the chat rooms. I assume things haven't changed that much.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    All major IRC networks hide your IP address when you connect now (mode +x), but I bet the perception still exists. Most of these ToS'es are thoughtless copypasta from other services.. every now and then there's a Show HN from a new hosting company that has absurd nonsense in their terms, and the creator gets suitably chastised for it.