I need to sometimes connect to IRC such as undernet and efnet servers thru the web hosts to run a bot, not a war bot but a harmless infobot.

But most web hosts don't allow it, why is this? Is it because web hosts cannot meter the data or some other reason?

Who allows IRC connection via their servers? I could search for them but does anyone have good experience with any, especially if they sell both web hosting and IRC.

who knows?
i've never fully understood this either...
but apparently the primary excuse for not allowing background processes (IRC bots, for example) is because it takes alot of the system resources... and it probably does.

and more importantly, there's also that chance that the bot is going to be attacked for no reason what so ever. there are always those people on irc networks that find pleasure in "taking over" channels or flooding bunch of users out. so matter what kind of bot you want to run (war or just information), the chance of it getting a DoS attack is very high.

From our exp. about 99% of the customers we use to allow any access ot IRC would be attacked, way to high of a percentage to continue to allow it.

I think the answer is actually pretty simple. You're paying for web hosting, not IRC.

IRC bots needlessly consume system resources, which takes away from the resources available to web hosting users, and they also make the server a likely target for a denial of service attack.

jimharison,

I recommend you post your e-mail address so some companies can contact you directly. :)

Charles is correct,

Its been my experience as well that running IRC servers and Bots off a webhosting server increases the chance for DOS and other attacks by a large %. Its just a whole lot easier to not allow them than to take the chance of getting attacked and your network go down.. :).

Actually,Most web hosts do not allow background processes for IRC because of the high risk of getting DoSed because of retaliation - server/channel takeovers. Also, the companies that allow bots etc. have a very high rate of credit card fraud.

James R. Clark II
Nethosters Inc.
http://www.nethosters.com