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VPS for Tor (VfT) offers.
Since the other thread talking about Tor does not really cover this, lets keep it simple.
1. Place your offers speciffying:
a. Price;
b. Bandwidth;
c. Whether you allow an exit node or not and, if you do, which ports are OK (ex: 80, 110, 995, 443, full exit with irc (25 is blocked by default even with full exit), full exit without IRC, etc);
d. If you can offer more than one location and more than one IP range for Tor offers;
e. Any other info you consider relevant for your prospective customers, such as how you will handle complaints (for example if you forward to operator or handle yourself giving automated answer about the IP being a Tor exit node and you or the operator being shielded by the law, how long the operator has till will have to reply if you forward, stuff like this), what you consider abuse (too high bandwidth, too much memory burst, CPU usage, etc), in short, anything you consider of interest based on your experience with Tor so far.
2. What is Tor ? You can find all about it here: https://www.torproject.org/
A few highlights:
-Like the internet was started by US army (navy) (http://www.onion-router.net/)
-It is legal (https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html)
-It does require bandwidth but very little space (100 MB are more than enough on top of a stripped down linux distro (httpd not really needed but a small one for a static page can be provided in case ppl become curious about that IP), little memory which is usually constant (no bursts for a well configured node) and very little CPU.
3. This is in no way a place to debate things such if ppl should or should not run Tor, how much of traffic if any could be illegal etc. Only to place offers for hosting it, but feel free to debate the political, economical and legal matters in the other thread. (http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/1347/tor-node-on-low-end-boxes#Item_32)
M
Comments
I don't get it
Are you asking for a provider supporting tor?
Or are you suggesting to post offers with all this details?
Or are you imposing your law xD
Not really supporting, but allowing. Some might do special offers with lots of BW, low space/mem/cpu to give themselves more freedom in balancing around machines.
Details are needed because ppl looking to put up their routers will look here first, even if this isnt a special offer (normally).
M
I'd never buy a vps from a provider allowing tor.
Any trouble magnet (TOR, seedbox, gameservers, irc, warez hosting/linking, proxy, illegal activities etc) can make the node where my vps is less reliable and at risk of being seized o ddosed. (i know dr.mike had a girlscout website ddosed, but i consider that an unfortunate exception)
For me a provider doing his best to keep his node clean of risky activities is a plus. YMMV
First, it is not TOR, but Tor. This shows little knowledge about subject, like most ppl that are against Tor.
Second, Tor is legal, cant be compared with warez and stuff.
Third, you cant know what ppl do, as such, your node will still be at risk of being seized, even if the provider does everything legal, heck, even if everything IS legal, Big Brother may still have issues with some quoted material in a blog, for example and the Chinese/religious extremists/white supremacists, w/e can still ddos it for a reason or the other, or the datacenter might be, even if the company which rents there and you buy from adheres to the strictest police state rules.
Last time I checked PayPal and VISA got ddosed, if you are on the internet there are risks involved.
Instead of paying a high price to someone that promises the world at the "small" price of snooping around every now and then and keeping a hotline with the FBI open all the time, better think redundancy, mitigation, replication, backup, round-robin, etc and keep your costs down while improving reliability.
Besides, this is LEB, who in their right mind would run mission critical stuff here ?
Bottom of line, you cant prevent the inevitable, better be prepared for it when the time will come.
I would rather host with a popular host that is sold out and smart enough to balance resources with all kinds of uses for VPS than with ppl with empty servers that are at risk of going under. The ppl with many clients, servers, nodes, can hire a lawyer to keep the police state away, while the others will just be happy to comply with whatever the cops demand, be it legal or not.
Besides, my company will have backup procedures for an emergency situation to move everyone off that node in case it is seized, DDoSed, fried, etc if I am hosting something critical there.
You want a LEB for 7 bucks and host your life on it ?
Tough luck, I am sorry for your business and customers, pray they will never find out, but the odds are against you.
M
So hosts who basically just allow websites to run on your VPS?
Get a shared hosting then.
@Maounique Your perception of reality is very skewed.
That is not a valid point at all. What about those people who use it for development? Are you saying that they should lose money because they wanted to keep their development costs down?
If the first issue you have with somebody is holding the shift key longer than they should have then you're post is off to a bad start.
You can lessen the chances of bad things happening which is what most companies do, it makes more sense to plan on NOT loosing your clients than it is to plan for when you lose them. Also, there are plenty of companies out there who have never had hardware seized from them so this "inevitable" is not so certain.
I'm sure most people are in agreement here, although I don't see how it pertains to your argument.
You think a lawyer will help "keep the police state away"? A lawyer is good for getting your stuff back after it's been taken, if the police have a court issued document to seize material, the best lawyer in the world will not help you unless you hire them to sit next to your servers waiting for that to happen. Again, you seem to have no idea how the real world operates. How many businesses have you run that gives you such insight?
Again, this shows how little you know about how the real world operates. If a government is planning to raid a data center, they do not give notice to the server owners, they show up and take them, then you are notified by your monitoring software that your server is offline and then you find out why when you call the data center. If they gave MegaUpload any sort of notice do you really think they would be offline now?
Some people do. Why spend $50 when you can get the same thing for $7? No matter what you are using an LEB for you have the expectation that your VPS will not go offline because the node it was on was seized by law enforcement. It's an expectation 99% of hosts try to meet and they do so by having rules in place to avoid it. Even with the most brilliant legal department it will still take weeks to retrieve your hardware and by then your clients are long gone.
There are plenty of examples out there that prove the contrary though.
I'd never buy a vps from a provider where nearly everything is prohibited.
And i'd never buy a vps from a provider where everything is allowed
Sounds really abusable, should be forbidden :->
Touché! Me neither
so your point is that VPS are just for shady use? If you are aware that your activity will cause troubles to others you had better get a dedi and clearly tell what you will do. But i suppose you don't like paying a premium. This for the shady/risky part (proxy, irc, Tor etc)
If you're buying a VPS for illegal traffic (ddos/warez/most torrents etc) i just hope you get booted from your provider. Not everyone here is interested in sharing a node with a criminal.
about gameservers i have no first hand experience but a few providers when i opened ticket because my vps being slow answered they had a problem with gamesers (and moving those to separate nodes) so i can't tell if some gameserver software abuse server resources, or players often have fun ddosing. But i'm curious to learn.
just a few days ago KuJoe said that on his servers he believe just 2% of traffic is illegal.
I think you're both right. Maybe truth is that there are providers allowing everything on their nodes, and other prefering to deal with people that doesn't like troubles.
Someone will pay a premium for a provider to "hire a lawyer to keep the police state away" other (including myself) are happy to use less resources and share a node where troublemagnets are not allowed.
Not all LEB providers share and target the same user base.
WIth game servers, I host a L4D server, L4D is known as a more demanding game for CPU because of the horde / director. Ive not seen my CPU above 0.3, and with a reboot every day the RAM stays <300 mb (otherwise there seems to be a slow leak after 2 weeks there is just under 500 mb RAM. Uses around 20-30 GB a month i would say in terms of bandwidth. Ive not had any DDOS attacks that i know off. Just going from that I wouldnt say its a drastic drain on resources ?
Not only that, any trouble magnet (TOR, seedbox, gameservers, irc, warez hosting/linking, proxy, illegal activities etc) tend to use more resources in addition to being a legal liability they cost the host more to operate.
what's the use YOU are interested in?
@exussum no it doesn't seem like it, but we have had some L4D customers that were pretty heavy on disk I/O
Wait, what? Why are you calling me a criminal again? Where did I say I want to use my VPS for anything illegal? The shadiest thing I ever did with my VPS was using it to watch BBC iPlayer. Yes, I'm a criminal now!
Watch your words young man.
@vedran you bring up a good point, usually if someone contacts us presales we will make note on their account to not shut them down for Tor if we don't get any abuse complaints on their vps from our providers.
Another example:http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/11/tor-german-police-ar.html . Police seized the Tor among other computers, colateral damage, not because they were after Tor, they just happened to be in the IP list so Tor was just one of the "colateral damage" victims. However, that is old news, cops are more educated today and it wont happen again, most likely.
Fancy any recent (last 3 years) of Tor servers seized ? Were there fewer Tor exit nodes around (only those could be falling in the braindead's cop IP only investigation) ? Is police more aware of it and avoids being embarassed again ?
Who stands to lose customers again ? Ppl with tough rules that still are at risk (albeit lower) or those that use the legal means to defend against abuse and keep their customers and themselves shielded ?
M
@Maounique we have had several charity organizations that rely on the vps host with us, and several other people that have customers on their vps with NO backups and NO other vps for sync in case one goes down.
But keeping tabs against legal and legit software and usage will surely lose you customers. That is 100% guaranteed provided you are in business for more than a few weeks. - That's definitely not true. Of course it will loose you some customers, but you will keep the good ones.
$50 is pretty cheap for a dedicated machine
- you quoting OVH? :P That's true though, a $7 vps is not == $50 vps.
Who stands to lose customers again ? Ppl with tough rules that still are at risk (albeit lower) or those that use the legal means to defend against abuse and keep their customers and themselves shielded ? - Both.
@marrco said: If you're buying a VPS for illegal traffic (ddos/warez/most torrents etc) i just hope you get booted from your provider. Not everyone here is interested in sharing a node with a criminal.
Sorry, English is not my first language. I meant "If ANYONE is buying a VPS for illegal traffic..." not you personally. My mistake, but i hope the point is clear.
or?
I havent checked the Disk IO @Corey - ill check it next time im online when the server is full. Also my Server is a public steam server so should have more use.
@Corey
That's definitely not true. Of course it will loose you some customers, but you will keep the good ones.
Hum, it is either deffinitelly not true or not (pun intended) ? Since you do lose customers it is deffinitelly 100% true.
Charities or non-charities they should have backups at least once a day. Not doing so is asking for trouble, no matter what will go wrong.
Bottom of line, everyone has own policy, that is the issue of the service provider, however, poluting this thread with false alegations, comparing Tor with warez and the like will serve little to the community and to ppl really interested to do some business and find a provider for their needs.
Everyone who doesnt allow Tor, fine, you choose not to look at the facts, your loss, but why would you advertise against a service you dont provide ? You dont stand to lose anything if others do, they are not competing for same clients and even if you see them as competition youshould be happy of their demise at the hands of FBI waterboarders and such. It is a win-win situation, so why not go back to your business and leave the others do theirs ?
M
@Maounique you seem to be very disgruntled about everything tor related. The simple fact is that when we get abuse complaints on a tor node, someone was probably downloading warez with it, of course they could do this with just their node alone, but tor makes this a more common occurrence.
Who advertises against a service they don't provide? I guess I'm missing something here.
Also - why would any company want to keep any other than 'the good ones'.
"so why not go back to your business and leave the others do theirs ?" - hold on a second I'm just making conversation why are you telling me to 'go away', that's rude.
i think there is another thread for discussion.....
Indeed, this thread is not for discussion, this is for ppl to put up their offers.
A non-exit Tor node is highly unlikely to give any issues since no end traffic will come out of it and everything flowing will be encrypted most of the times more than once.
Even the most conservative ppl should consider allowing this unless they have BW issues and plenty CPU, RAM and space to spare.
M
P.S. @Corey Sorry, if you felt that, I am simply saying this is not the thread for discussing Tor. Regarding the service they dont offer but do make noise against, that is even less welcome here.
Sigh Here we go.
I understand your point that providers should have some form of backup plan, but that's all it should be, a backup plan. Not a 'once they catch wind of our questionable clients, we'll fling them on there', plan.
I guess you're trying to say that providers should help keep their clients online. Which I agree with; and rejecting potentially abusive clients is one way of doing that.
Not at all. I'm sure this has been mentioned, but all uses of a VPS have a potential risk attached to them; an IRC daemon could attract DDoS attacks, P2P is generally not great, and running a web server could host kiddy porn.
Yes, Tor has it's legitimate usage, for example escaping oppressive censorship, but it also has it's darker uses.
Let's not mention that host Anonymous got a bit annoyed at.
Tor has it's own risks because you have very little control over the content and potential usage of the bandwidth. Something both you and the provider understand.
I'm not sure you phrased that well, but you're suggesting that providers are refusing a service they actively advertise?
I've never seen 'Tor-Exit-Node-VPS-Host.com', or anyone actively advertising the use of Tor. Correct me if I'm wrong.
That's not exactly fair, let's be honest.
As a community, the idea is that people can express their opinions openly to potentially benefit the other users.
If that's steering away fellow hosts from getting into legal trouble by simply chiming in about the possible dangers, then doesn't that fit with the community spirit?
By ranting on, preaching about the beauty of Tor makes you look like you aren't open to the potential dangers, therefore making you look potentially irresponsible.
My 'bottom line' is, ask the damn provider if it's okay.
That might be the best advice you're going to get on the subject.
Be open with them, and if they do allow it, make sure there's a definite channel of communication so you can deal with the potential abuse and complaints.
Good luck with your Tor adventures.
I wish our fake customers would pay us more fake money, then.
Additionally, since @maounique is speaking for all Tor users with things like "First, it is not TOR, but Tor. This shows little knowledge about subject, like most ppl that are against Tor."), they seem to be under the impression that LEB's are toys that have no value or meaning.
Maybe we should start offering LEB VPS's on the premise that Tor is neither allowed nor approved, but then just ban them and keep their money. After all, it's just a toy and is useless, so no big deal apparently.
@Damian4IPXcore right right!!
@Maounique - We've tried to be polite about this, but you're pretty much just avoiding the legitimate issues we've already brought up.
Correct, Tor is not illegal. Neither is bittorrent or other forms of P2P, it's how you use it.
The biggest "noble" claim Tor has is security/privacy/anonymity. Which is really pretty worthless once you stop to realize that anyone running an exit node can snoop traffic.
If you're that concerned about security, setup a VPN and manage it yourself. If you absolutely have to access those select shady sites only available through Tor, at least be honest with your fetishes. If you're that concerned with finding a host that will allow Tor? I strongly advise that you post your request on warez forums; the legitimate providers here (whom you seem to have no respect for anyways) really want nothing to do with your hypocrital holy crusade.
got 8 players currently on there
iotop shows 0% when they switch level i get a spike (seems to load it all in to cache) one of the largest maps
-rw-r--r-- 1 l4d1 l4d1 27759180 Jan 6 16:24 l4d_vs_smalltown05_houseboat.bsp
-rw-r--r-- 1 l4d1 l4d1 14094321 Jan 6 16:24 l4d_vs_smalltown05_houseboat.nav
So that much read every 15 mins or so isnt a huge amount either