I'm thinking of setting up an IRCD For members/users of a website,
Just wanted some opinions on the following things.

1. How much bandwidth do ircd's use (ex. 20 users max at one time.)
2. What Connection did you use (Cable, DSL, oc3, etc).
3. What provider/data center hosted it(or yourself?).
4. How much did/does it cost you per month.
5. Any other suggestions related to irc hosting.

ryza

ryza,

An IRC with 20 clients max should use less then 1 GB bandwidth a month easily if its configured right. Some IRCD clients uses more resources and bandwidth then others depending on the additional features it has. But an IRCD should use less then what a forum board would use. I would also recommend at least a T-1 connection for stability. You would need to find a host that provides shell accounts that allows IRCD and usually costs approx. $20-25 a month. A search for shell accounts should find you plenty of places. Hope this helps.

5. Any other suggestions related to irc hosting. a good pre-sales question would be to ask how they handle attacks. From what I've seen a good deal of hosts offering IRC related services tend to get them at one time or another.
It might not be necessarily your server they're targetting but if they go down then yours goes down as well.

Added to say that if you wanted a link, when I was looking into shell accounts for IRC I heard good things about http://www.wildfyre.com . They have a rather strict way of signing up though, they require a copy front and back of your credit card, driver's license/passport copy and a letter authorizing them to use your card. They state they've been in business since May 1999 which is fairly long for any internet company.

they dont say how much bandwidht they offer at the wildfyre...but i dont know about giving a copy of my license and credit card fully to them .... thats alot of info to just a hosting site.

I have a related question...im looking to open an ircd for my site again...ive done them in the past before. My qeustion is do you think i should set it up on my dedicated server where i host my main site or if i should purchase a seprate host that specializes in ircd hosting?

Purchasing with someone who specializes in ircd hosting can save you a lot of money and give you bonus features such as redundant ip addresses and heavy ddos filtering.