Well, IMHO, the best shell is the one you have at home. Get a cable connection, grab some old hardware, install Linux with ipchains/iptables and run your eggies.
http://uptime.eggheads.org/?botnick=inf3rn0 is on my home shell, and I never got this far on any commercial shell I've been on. And it could probably even be better if I bought a UPS :p
And this goes even more if you want to use IRCnet (as I do as well), because that is a pain to get connected to through a shell company...
O well i know that. I already made up a lan with two pc.
But i dont know there, here in italy cable connection is available only in Rome and Milan, where i am living there isn't neither an ADSL connection.
So i cannot do what you told me )
Cant really rate anyone as the best for using services to connect to an irc network but we are certainly favourite for connecting to ircnet.netvision.net.il as we are both physicly positioned in the same country.
For all we know, Shell Company A, have a co-located server, in the same server centre as 20 IRC servers. This does not mean they are the best company.
Routing plays a big part in these things.
We worked on a small system, providing Intranet access for our remote users. We switched providers several times before we settled down.
All our remote users, use a single ISP. When they connected to our intranet server, the connection was routed too america, before returning to the intranet server.
The hop count was only 5 hops, as it is today, but our routing time/latency is reduced.
The same applies with shells.
You could connect to a IRC server, phyisicaly located in the same room as the shell (not physical network though). The connection may be routed to hell and back to get there, whereas a servers in america is reduced to only a few hops.
Shell companies like to create the ilusion that speed, location, a fancy web-page and uptimes are everything. This is simply not true.
Support, connection stability as well as uptime, location up to the point that thesystem isn't comercial prices for a system sitting under the providers bedroom and a suppotive web-page.
traceroute to irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 vl602-srvc-hfa.netvision.net.il (199.203.55.252) 0.484 ms 0.391 ms 0.383 ms
2 irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156) 0.253 ms 0.230 ms 0.224 ms
64 bytes from irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156): icmp_seq=0 ttl=254 time=377 usec
64 bytes from irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156): icmp_seq=1 ttl=254 time=274 usec
64 bytes from irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156): icmp_seq=2 ttl=254 time=655 usec
64 bytes from irc.netvision.net.il (194.90.1.156): icmp_seq=3 ttl=254 time=270 usec
we are two hops away and ping returns 0.3ms result
thats mainly since our servers and ircnet.netvision.net.il is physicly very close (around 5 meters).
i wouldnt comment about proximity and priority to begin with if i wasnt absolutly sure the details are correct.
First off, somthing I failed to point out in my previous post, this information is classed as advertising, and will be removed if we want too.
Most of what I said, isn't directly ainted at your own company, and I believe all shell providers should get a fair chance, so long as the customers do too. I aint a customer, so I can't comment directly on the service.
Too comment however, what you have shown, is information, showing that from that shell server, data passes through one router, then directly into the IRC server.
This is one of those cases of bad advertisment. Many users would be fooled into thinking of 1st class service, because of speed and proximity.
This applies only to a single server. All users want a stable bot, on stable IRC servers, with the ability to cover more than one IRC server.
What would happen if netvision decide to discontinue the IRC server service, even more so when the reason the ran one in the first place, was ecause of bad routing issues?
This isn't somthing that needs answering, nor is it anything personal. On the whole, these questions apply to any service.
i simply commented to the following question:
Hi guys.
I want to buy a shell
but i don't know what is the best shell for IRC net
Can you tell me you opinion?
Thanx
with this:
Cant really rate anyone as the best for using services to connect to an irc network but we are certainly favourite for connecting to ircnet.netvision.net.il as we are both physicly positioned in the same country.
i fail to see how from THAT you have managed to react about service quality etc (which i didnt even cover in my reply but stated the physical proximity of the two servers)
if you grasp this as an advertisment i apologize, its anyway intended towards you alone since i see that you are online :]