Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


X4B Network Protection | Early Access Feedback (Beta Testers Wanted!)
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

X4B Network Protection | Early Access Feedback (Beta Testers Wanted!)

SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep

We are currently seeking beta testers for a new product line we perceive to be of interest to Low End Company operators.

What is this offering?

A high quality mitigation service at a reasonable price point specifically designed for small -
medium VPS and WebHosts with plans available for ranges as small as a /29 up to /24's. For testing we are after smaller deployments over larger. With plans as low as $100/month. This includes all of our normal features (reporting, monitoring, high availability, Anycast, premium bandwidth etc) on a Routed or NAT'ed GRE tunnel from AS136165 out of any of our PoPs.

What do we want from testers?

Private honest testing and feedback.

Who do we want?

VPS providers, Shared Webhosting providers and similar businesses. We strongly recommend applying only if you have the ability to deploy in a staging, development or other safe environment. This is a beta service and is not yet production ready.

We hope to gather information on installation instructions, compatibility and other issues.

What's in it for me?

Aside from early access for free, you will also be offered a very-reasonable rate for continuation below RRP after the end of the beta testing period should you wish to continue.

How to apply

Shoot me a PM or reply here. We will get back to you. As this is a free offer this is available only to those with verifiable businesses.

Comments

  • doghouchdoghouch Member
    edited December 2017

    $100/mo is a lot compared to using an OVH server and putting a massive GRE tunnel.

    Edit: what makes your service more worth it?

  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2017

    @doghouch

    Personally I think anyone who has used OVH DDoS Protection probably has some experiences of major attacks leaking (or over-mitigation) and practically non-existent support to get it resolved. At the end of the day it's a free bundled protection with a server from a company with little to no support - it's regularly bypassed and mostly non-configurable but that's not unexpected. Additionally it's strictly Later 3/4, no HTTP or HTTPS mitigation awareness (we have recently massively increased our capacity for due to larger attacks and have continued investment planned in that area). We regularly do tunnels to those located at OVH, those whose needs are not being met there. I think that summarises some of the good reasons why most of the respectable industry is paying their money to the paid providers, rather than exploiting the free protection from OVH.

    I could go into more detail but I don't wan't to get into a pricing comparison, or the merits of quality. The point here is to get some beta testers for feedback. This is a commonly requested service, which we have finally got around to offering. We want to make sure this will meet the needs of the customers, and are hence here.

    Further I want to stress this isn't just some server we are delivering it's an install and go service (in-fact we will be including installation in the optional but recommended setup fee). It's setup correctly to be able to handle L3-7 attacks properly, monitored as a service offering the same way we do our consumer services so as not to take time away from your NOC, includes all the HA features (redundancy of our Anycast network) and further it includes our reporting system for actual insight into your service (which has some big upgrades in the works).

    It's our aim here to offer something that's of a higher quality than the standard "tunnel from XYZ" while keeping the price down less than the standard $1,000 per tunnel (or what is Voxility now? $2,027.42 apparently) we regularly see quoted. Of course if your entirely driven by price and quality or features don't matter a $30 server from OVH out of France is probably your best bet.

    Thanked by 1doghouch
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @doghouch said:
    $100/mo is a lot compared to using an OVH server and putting a massive GRE tunnel.

    Edit: what makes your service more worth it?

    Frankly there's no service out there like this one. The panel is unique and perfect for what it is. It's not flawless but x4b is offering something I haven't seen for much larger costs. There are things that cost exponentially more that I'd prefer less than x4b.

    I've many complaints about OVH but they're specific to me. First, can't run a mail relay for yourself unless it filters so perfectly that no spam could ever get through, otherwise SMTP block despite zero risk because relay (meaning it's a reason I can't use them, therefore needing alternative for protection). Their DDOS protection itself also performs very poorly with high volume of IMAP connections. Those are just me though, but it's a real world case where x4b could meet needs that OVH could not.

    Thanked by 1doghouch
  • 6ixth6ixth Member
    edited December 2017

    I see that you have Psychz announced on your ASN, does this mean you could provide this service as direct line (cross connect) instead of tunnel (in their AMS location)? I'd be prepared to test it if you can. Registered business etc etc as per your requirements.

  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep

    @6ixth PM me the details of what you are thinking and your requirements driving that and I'll see what we can work out. As this beta is for free I'm not able to cover any cross-connect fees however, that being said I've got ample bandwidth in AMS and I'm sure if you are going to use a fair bit I can get a fair rate from them for both our ends over the public network's switches.

    @jarland Thanks jarland. I hope we continue to beat expectations :)

    Thanked by 16ixth
  • @SplitIce said:
    @6ixth PM me the details of what you are thinking and your requirements driving that and I'll see what we can work out. As this beta is for free I'm not able to cover any cross-connect fees however, that being said I've got ample bandwidth in AMS and I'm sure if you are going to use a fair bit I can get a fair rate from them for both our ends over the public network's switches.

    @jarland Thanks jarland. I hope we continue to beat expectations :)

    PM sent! Hopefully we can work something out :)

  • I've had a really good discussion with Split and he knows what he's talking about, highly recommend him from a support stand point and I look forward to testing his product within the coming weeks.

    Thanked by 1SplitIce
  • @jarland Thank you for clarifying. I now understand that OVH offers DDoS protection (albeit not the best) targeted to smaller entities, rather than this service, which is targeted towards hosting companies.

    @SplitIce Best of luck with your service! Happy new year as well :)

  • I don't like too much x4b because of some minor things which happen in my experience with them (support answers). But I can't say that their protection is bad, or their protection is shit. Because this is not true.
    In 2012 - 2016 I was like a DDoS Magneto. Did not matter where, and on what hosting my hobby project which did not even give me any profit was a target of massive high-grade DDoS attacks (50-100gbit/s easy), plus 5k-100k rps against site from different botnets from guys, who got very painful butthurt from me (never make angry dangerous idiots with a lot of money, don't repeat my faults). And you know, I made many reviews about different DDoS protected providers what i used (for 2017 situation in 100x times better than it was earlier (but not with all providers, but with the DDoS scena / and DDoS protection scena at all). I was in the situation when I made much bigger mistakes and tried "luxury" providers which cost tons of $$$, and you may know, this did not worth it at all. Money wasted, time expired, hatters think that they won and so on, and in last moment x4b always was like my personal angel-bodyguard from the antiDDoS world. Yes, they have some issues, lags, and different problems like any other provider do (when you starting to work with provider, you can notice any of such issues anywhere), but in the most dangerous moments when my hobby project was on blaze between life and death, x4b turn back projects to the life, and helped me to protect very primitive and funny hobby which I'm managing for years, and shitty angry idiots with big wallets lost, and give up trying to break x4b for around 7 or 14 days NON STOP by trying totally different CUSTOM and not only types of attacks. All that I was is results in x4b CP like: "blah blah blah attack name, blah blah -> mitigated".

    Since the end of 2016, i have stopped my hobby and do not know anymore what is going on here with DDoS protections and so on. And don't know, I heard that OVH really pretty well doing their job against L3-L4 layers, but does nothing against L7 (I talk about web-server protection against botnets with custom AI). But I think, not really big changes applied to the whole market. Because a lot of providers does not have and do not even trying to protect their networks. I hope, that in some day dozens of providers (big one) will be down and will lose their business because at some day they did not invest some money for them and their clients against this very critical and very dangerous vector of attack called DDoS. Like some time ago it happens to Linode.

    And last, x4b prices are correct and good. Do not understand why people crying about it. Because these guys creating an intellectual product, not just reselling some top-tier network. They have as far as I know custom CP, custom filters, custom kb, they answering to tickets and so on. For any kind of work need to pay.

  • Test IP?

  • @maldovia said:
    Test IP?

    Excuse me? He is selling DDOS protection and you want to test it?

  • FAT32FAT32 Administrator, Deal Compiler Extraordinaire
    edited December 2017

    @AuroraZ said:

    @maldovia said:
    Test IP?

    Excuse me? He is selling DDOS protection and you want to test it?

    Maybe he wants to try DDOSing?

  • doghouchdoghouch Member
    edited December 2017

    @FAT32 said:

    @AuroraZ said:

    @maldovia said:
    Test IP?

    Excuse me? He is selling DDOS protection and you want to test it?

    Maybe he wants to try DDOSing?

    You can’t be serious...?

  • FAT32FAT32 Administrator, Deal Compiler Extraordinaire

    @doghouch said:

    >

    @FAT32 said:
    Maybe he wants to try DDOSing?

    >

    You can’t be serious...?

    Yes, to test if it can be mitigated /s

  • @FAT32 said:

    @doghouch said:

    >

    @FAT32 said:
    Maybe he wants to try DDOSing?

    >

    You can’t be serious...?

    Yes, to test if it can be mitigated /s

    I hope you realize what you’ve suggested. Read the rules, you dumb f*ck.

  • FAT32FAT32 Administrator, Deal Compiler Extraordinaire

    @doghouch said:

    >

    I hope you realize what you’ve suggested. Read the rules, you dumb f*ck.

    It is just a joke man, I am not promoting nor suggesting actual attack, even if so there isn't even any IPs listed here.

  • @FAT32 said:

    @doghouch said:

    >

    I hope you realize what you’ve suggested. Read the rules, you dumb f*ck.

    It is just a joke man, I am not promoting nor suggesting actual attack, even if so there isn't even any IPs listed here.

    I know, but you’re not allowed to suggest anything illegal, even though it is a joke.

    We’re 100% white hat here.

    Thanked by 1FAT32
  • @doghouch said:

    @FAT32 said:

    @doghouch said:

    >

    I hope you realize what you’ve suggested. Read the rules, you dumb f*ck.

    It is just a joke man, I am not promoting nor suggesting actual attack, even if so there isn't even any IPs listed here.

    I know, but you’re not allowed to suggest anything illegal, even though it is a joke.

    We’re 100% white hat here.

    Really wasn't him that suggested it. Check my post before this one.

  • @FAT32 My apologies. I didn’t bother reading the rest of the post and the context of which I based my post was wrong.

    Err, it’s probably because it’s 3:30 AM.

    Thanks for the clarification @AuroraZ.

  • @doghouch said:
    @FAT32 My apologies. I didn’t bother reading the rest of the post and the context of which I based my post was wrong.

    Err, it’s probably because it’s 3:30 AM.

    Thanks for the clarification @AuroraZ.

    It's cool man. : )

  • Didn't X4B get hacked at one point?
    Did your security improve or something?
    Also I remember X4B using OVH servers before you guys registered an ASN so it's funny to see you shit on OVH.

  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2017

    @Gods in our 6 years of operation we have had one security incident that was fully disclosed both by public disclosure and emails with information to relevant customers. It was quite a while ago, and it was unfortunate that this occurred, however it did. I don't want to understate the importance of good security, however unfortunately this is the world we live in. All it takes is one buggy piece of software and slip up in privileges / trust model and a breach can occur. As evident by all the big hacks these last few years (Big DCs like Hetzner or multinationals like SONY etc)

    In our case a 0day existed in the system we use for monitoring and this access was used to gain access to a set of servers which were in staging to become the new web/db servers.

    As we have a strict policy of separation of our SSL(client uploaded PK/CERT) servers they where of course un-compromised. Further following the breach we did a comprehensive review and strengthening of any weakpoints identified within our deployments. And we will continue to keep the lessons learnt in mind, and keep security at the front of our mind in the decision making process. We operate in a more interconnected and risky world every day.

  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep

    Also @Gods I tried very hard not to "shit on" anyone. I believe my opinion is pretty fair and unbiased, further I expect I'm not alone in my experiences. I'm in a fairly unique position since I have been involved in the mitigation industry for many years to have tested many networks (OVH included). We operated a single server with them for around 3 years, until we eventually culled it due to quality / general issues. I haven't regretted that decision in the slightest.

    Our opening our own ASN is really irrelevant. An ASN is really unnecessary unless you are doing Anycast or other setup requirements that particularly require it. We opened ours on the launch of our Anycast network, a major step forward for us and a setup which requires an ASN. We still announce many of our ranges on other ASNs and plan too keep doing so going into the future.

    None of this is really relevant to the purpose of this topic however, which is to find beta testers.

    To those who have PM'ed me. I'll get back to you in the new year. My inbox is currently overflowing and I've only managed to deal with a few messages so far. I want to stress that the best candidates for testing are small deployments initially. Let's walk before running so that we can do the job right.

Sign In or Register to comment.