What are Resource Usage Policies?

In hosting environments, a server’s resources are what economists would call a common pool resource, meaning that although having plenty of available system resources benefits everyone, no single user has an incentive to ensure that they don’t use too many resources themselves. In an effort to protect against the tragedy of the (server) commons, we have placed limits on the amount of a server’s resources that any given user may consume. While these are limits, server abuse is not limited to these policies and is up to Elcoserv’s discretion what constitutes server abuse.

The Purpose of These Policies

Understand that these policies are in place to protect you, our customers, from poor service quality. Generally, if we need to impose a restriction on an account for resource abuse, that account is in violation of at least two of these policies (or one policy to a very serious degree) and is adversely affecting the other clients on their server. The large, large majority of sites, at least 99.5%, will never even have to take these limits into consideration. That being said, it’s good to make yourself aware of them.

Enforcement

It is also important to note that many of these limits can be seen as “soft” limits. They are not actively enforced, and you can run up to or even over most of them without issue. If, however, you start to affect the overall performance of a server, we do need to have limits and policies in place. Without them it’s incredibly hard to explain to the customer, in quantitative terms, exactly how a site is consuming too many system resources. If an account is found to be in violation of these Resource Usage Policies, we will do our best to work with clients to give 48 hours, 5 days, or 10 days notice depending on the severity of the violation. We reserve the right as outlined in the Terms of Service to suspend a site if it is causing a severe problem.

The Policies

General

  • Running a publicly-accessible proxy or anonymizer is not permitted.
  • Prime bank or bank debenture-related sites, lottery sites, hate sites, hacker-related sites, sites promoting illegal activity, IP scanner or other hacking tools, mail bombing or spam scripts, or forums and websites that distribute or promote warez content are expressly forbidden.
  • Bit torrent applications, trackers, and clients as well as any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities are forbidden.
  • IRC and IRC bots are strictly prohibited on Elcoserv’s servers.
  • Processes requiring root privileges are forbidden on managed services.
  • All web applications that are out of date and actively being exploited will be shut down immediately without notice. As a webmaster you should evaluate your web based applications and scripts on a regular basis to ensure they’re secure and up to date.

Email and Mailing Lists

  • The use of Elcoserv.com servers and networks to transmit unsolicited bulk/commercial email (also know as spam) is strictly forbidden. Under no circumstance is the transmission of spam acceptable or tolerated.
  • The transmission of spam from our servers and networks can cause irreparable monetary and reputation damage. All damages caused by spamming will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
  • Any client caught explicitly spamming from our servers or networks will have their account immediately terminated & without notice.
  • We do not allow you to send to a mailing list you were given or that you bought. This is spamming and we have zero tolerance for this.

Adult Content

  • Under no circumstance is pornography permitted.
  • Nudity, adult-oriented e-commerce stores, and similar are allowed if the content is legal in the United States of America.
  • Elcoserv.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Dedicated IP Addresses

  • Dedicated IP Addresses require valid justification.
  • Valid justification includes SSL certificates and DNS nameservers.

Failure To Comply With Policy

Failure to fully comply with these terms is grounds for account suspension and/or termination (with or without refund, subject to Elcoserv’s discretion).
We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice. If we terminate your account for violating policy, you will forfeit your rights to a refund – and none will be given.

Questions

The examples listed herein are a guide and may not be an exhaustive list. If you have a question on whether or not your content is in violation, please email our Abuse Department for clarification.