IRC Use

[ScarletEmerald]

Hi, I'm thinking about getting a shell here, but one of the things I'd like to do is experiment with some IRC clients and bots (nothing malicious). Your terms of service seem to forbid this, but from looking around the forums it looks like you might be making some changes soon that would allow this? Otherwise, would there be some way to make an exception for clients, since they wouldn't attract DOS attacks?

[Renata]

Let me explain some basics of IRC,
I am IRC administrator myself, and were using unixshell# VPS for everything but IRC (mail for staff, mailing lists, web site, forum) so we dont break TOS ;)

IRCD (IRC Server) makes very extensive usage of network channel,
by itself IRC traffic is low, but network performance is critical,
so if network responsed are delayed for more than 1 second - users start complain on lag.
IRCD makes very high usage of hardware resources, expecially CPU usage.
Services also make very high usage of CPU and memory. For mid networks
i would recommend having an dedicated box with 256 Mb RAM, P4 class
for running services hub. Since UnixShell# doesnt let you run IRCD/Services
- you perhaps have to look for another shell. For small networks you can get an specialized IRCD shell. Its quite cheap and its better than run that on VPS.
(in the matter of performance)

IRC networks also are unmoderated medium and because of that everything
may happen, warez, porn etc etc - many providers dont want to deal with that. Drones attacks, DoS attacks, Heavy SYN/ICMP flood also is more common to IRC networks than to anything else - many sites also wont deal with that. Those who offer IRCD shells are prepares (or should be).

Testing IRC Clients/ Servers ?
This can be done on any IRCD shell, of course running drones and botnets is illegal (you can do that on your local machine though).

I hope i gave as complete explantation as possible ;)