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Catalyst Host review
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Catalyst Host review

NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran
edited November 2012 in Reviews

My first review here, but I think @jarland deserves it.

I have been using a Catalyst Host VPS since August when they launched. Specifically I have the VPS at FDC Denver, a custom plan with 250 mbps unmetred and 256 MB of memory.

Let me be clear: I am using most of the resources allocated to me, including 30 TB of bandwith each month and a full core of a relatively old Xeon L5520, here you have some stats. I am not abusing the node but my container hasn't been sitting idle during this time.

Uptime has been great, ticket response times always low and both @jarland and Ryan are very friendly and they genuinely care about their customers. They may not have their own ASN and are new providing VPS hosting, but if you are interested on any of their high bandwidth or new storage plans, you can't go wrong with them. You will not be at the best network of the world with FDC Denver but the price it's ridiculous if you need tons of bandwidth. I don't know any other low end provider like them for bulk bandwidth.

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Comments

  • Why do i have no need for a US VPS :(

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    @GetKVM_Ash they are awesome. I wish there were an unmetred low end provider like them in the EU ¬¬

  • Out of curiosity, what are you doing with 30TB of data transfer?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Woohoo! A review! And I didn't have to pay anyone for it :P

    Thanks brother. Glad you're enjoying your service. Definitely the most utilized node we've got, and you could probably still keep a drink cool on top of it ;)

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    @gubbyte I didn't wanted to divulge that to attract more people doing the same on the node, but it's a Tor relay.

    @jarland you deserved the review. Node performance it's awesome, but your way of treating customers it's more than that.

    And I always wondered... any plans to set up a Zlin node in the future? I don't know how many european customers you do have, but there isn't any decent provider offering unmetered bandwidth in Europe AFAIK ;)

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited November 2012

    @Nyr said: any plans to set up a Zlin node in the future?

    My biggest concern is maintaining policies that are consistent with the laws where the server resides, I imagine I'd have to find a lawyer who specializes in international law. I'm not opposed to it though ;)

  • Glad to see good hosts get good reviews.

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    @jarland said: My biggest concern is maintaining policies that are consistent with the laws where the server resides

    Oh, it's understandable. I will keep an eye out for the future about that ^^

  • ryanarpryanarp Member, Patron Provider

    @Nyr thanks for the review. Glad your enjoying your services and will keep you posted about future expansions.

  • Where can you order the Denver one?

  • Thanks @Nyr :)

  • VPSSLIMVPSSLIM Patron Provider, Veteran

    Good to see that you're satisfied with your VPS host :)

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    Hi, please link the node from torstatus.blutmagie.de !
    Thanks :)
    I am glad there is another unmettered provider that really provides something like eNS :)

  • VPS seems nice, regardless of what they say themselves :)
    +1 for being class acts on here too.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @bobby said: +1 for being class acts on here too.

    Sorry, I feel obligated to ruin that right now. Just gonna get this out of my system.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Nyr Looks a little better than I'd have expected. In all fairness, I tried with everything I had to make an exit node work as well, without being subject to blacklists and DMCA complaints. Really gave it a good fight, just wasn't happening.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited November 2012

    Thanks Nyr and jarland for this, looks impressive :)
    I run little exits at home only, and with restrictive exit policies like this:
    http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/router_detail.php?FP=df7e288c559d828719598b2d1212c7ad286e5a95
    You should be safe with exits like those.
    How much is 30 TB with you ? :P

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    @jarland well, this isn't an exit node because FDC doesn't like Tor (and anyway I would need to ask you first, but with FDC simply isn't possible).
    I used to run exit nodes at other ISPs with reduced exit policies and they worked fairly well, but that isn't financially viable to me at the moment since I am just a student with no regular income.
    Anyway, reduced exit policies don't do magic. If you run a high traffic exit node you need to deal with abuse and your ISP will need to understand what Tor is and allow you to host that kind of service (or not care at all). So bandwidth from FDC or online.net can be cheap, but people need to go to ISPs like Voxility, NFOrce or Portlane to host any serious exit node.

    @Maounique it would look better if it wasn't because I don't want to abuse (more) the CPU, but thank you :)
    And I would never run an exit node from my home connection, that's really brave from you!
    I hope I can pay for a really big exit node at some good ISP if I can get a decent job in the future :P

  • @Nyr said: including 30 TB of bandwith each month

    His plans allow 30TB per month??

  • Reread OP, first post...

    Specifically I have the VPS at FDC Denver, a custom plan with 250 mbps unmetred and 256 MB of memory.

  • Someone using tor is flooding my irc channel in DALnet, and he's using almost the same nick of me everytime he's joining the channel.

    Now, that makes me curious what TOR is.
    Maybe will learn it if I have more time

  • @ErawanArifNugroho said: Now, that makes me curious what TOR is.

    Some say it's for top-class paranoid people that care too much about privacy, some say it's for people who like to do illegal stuff.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @gubbyte said: Some say it's for top-class paranoid people that care too much about privacy, some say it's for people who like to do illegal stuff.

    I like to call it spitting in the face of anyone who wants to control the internet.

  • Thanks gubbyte :)

    @jarland, I want to thanks, but no thanks button :D

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited November 2012

    Tor-Hide your IP address
    Freenet-host things anonymously in a self-contained distributed/encrypted P2P network
    Tor can also do that with .onion addresses, there are also gateways towards that, at least one with Prometeus, but Freenet does that better.
    There are proportionally many abusers and perverts, but that is because the big majority of ppl do not understand how the governments know everything they do online, and if the top generals in US become undesirable, there will be something found about them that will destroy their career, for example.
    You think you are safe with your email password ?
    Hmmm...

  • NyrNyr Community Contributor, Veteran

    To end the legal/morals discussion al least by my part, I wrote this when I used to run exit nodes, it's in Spanish but can be Google-translated:
    http://blog.nyr.be/por-que-regalo-ancho-de-banda-al-proyecto-tor/

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider
    edited November 2012

    @Maounique said: Tor-Hide your IP address

    It's a bit more complicated than that.

    TOR can act as multiple things:

    • A layered 'proxy' that makes your traffic go through 3 nodes before reaching the end destination. The first node only knows who you are but not what you send, the last node knows what you send but not who you are, and the middle node knows neither. All data is encrypted until the last node, as the last node will need to send the original request to the destination (and a random webserver on the internet will obviously not understand TOR encryption).
    • A 'darknet' of sorts, where you can reach other sites in the TOR network. These sites do not have an IP and are only reachable by their .onion address (via either TOR or some kind of TOR-capable proxy like onion.to). There are 5 nodes inbetween you and the destination, and traffic is encrypted all the way. The first node knows who you are but not what you send (pretty useless information), and the rest of the nodes knows nothing. Only the destination can decrypt your traffic.

    The key point you were missing is that TOR encrypts traffic. Even if you use it as a proxy to the 'clearnet' (non-darknet internet), it will encrypt your traffic along most of the way so that as few nodes as possible can sniff it. This has the additional result of decoupling your identity from your data, making it more secure than a VPN or regular SOCKS proxy.

    @Nyr said: To end the legal/morals discussion al least by my part, I wrote this when I used to run exit nodes, it's in Spanish but can be Google-translated:

    http://blog.nyr.be/por-que-regalo-ancho-de-banda-al-proyecto-tor/

    Google Translate appears to have a thing for creating badly constructed and unreadable English sentences. Any chance you could write an English version of your post?

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