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http://www.layersevenhosting.com/forum/

Please bear with us while it is skinned up, but in the meantime feel free to post away!

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (AUP)

Overview

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) has been created by Brash Limited to promote the integrity, security and reliability of its network, facilities, and customers.  Brash reserves the sole right to modify this AUP at any time and in any way it deems necessary. Notification of changes or amendments to this document will be posted on the website.
This policy shall be effective upon the establishment of the Customer account and will remain binding until the cessation of services by either parties. Throughout the term of its Agreement with Brash Limited, the Customer must ensure that the use of any service, product, or resource offered, owned, or controlled by Brash conforms to Brash Limited’s current AUP as well as Brash Limited’s Terms and Conditions. The Customer will be held responsible for its use, its systems, the users of its systems and offerings, and, in the case of resellers, and or any third-party use. These policies supercede any agreements previously made with Brash Limited be it written or oral.
The use of Brash Limited products as well as the receipt of any payments made for services provided by Brash constitutes the acceptance of this agreement as well as the Brash Terms and Conditions.

1. Acceptable Use:

In addition to the other requirements of this AUP, the Service may be used only in a manner that, in Brash Limited’s sole discretion, is consistent with the purposes of such Service. The Brash Services are specifically designed for and can only be utilised for standard business use.

Customers should contact Brash Limited if unsure of whether any contemplated use or action is permitted.

1.1 The usage of Brash Limited services must comply with current laws and regulations;
1.2 Including but not limited to regulations pertaining to copyright, license agreements and patents
1.3 Must adhere to rules and regulations in the Brash Terms and Conditions
1.4 Mail Services – The following mail limits are designed to enable Brash Limited’s mail server to operate at optimal efficiency therefore ensuring that all Brash clients receive the highest quality mail service possible:

a. Maximum Mailbox Size: 150 MB – All mailboxes will be capped at 150 MB per mail box.
b. Warning Message for mailbox quota: 140 MB – To ensure clients are aware that they are reaching the 150 MB limit. A warning message will be sent to clients once their mailboxes have reached 140MB. This will allow the client a chance to clear mail from the server.
c. Maximum Message Size: 40MB – The maximum size of a single message will be set to 40MB in line with the mailbox size. You will be able to receive a message up to 40960Kb provided you have adequate space on your mailbox.
d. Message Lifetime: 90 Days – In order to maintain the performance of our mail server guarantee new mail can be received as well as service standards mail left on the server for more than 90 days will automatically be deleted from the server.
e. Mail checking frequency – The maximum frequency of checking for new messages on the Brash Limited mail server should be no more than every 5 minutes. Our preferred frequency of checking mail is every 10 – 15 minutes. Our anti abuse system will block your IP for a set time if your mail checking frequency is too high.

2. Unacceptable Use:

By way of example, and not limitation, the following sections outline activities that are expressly prohibited.

The Service shall not be used to post, transmit, re-transmit or store material which, in the judgment of Brash Limited:

a. Violates local, state, federal, foreign, or International Law;
b. Could be considered threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory, threatening or that otherwise could adversely affect any individual, group or entity.
c. Deceptive or fraudulent practices.
d. Any activity infringing on the intellectual property rights of others, including, but not limited to, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, patents.

e. Actions that restrict or inhibit any Person, whether a customer, Brash Limited, or otherwise, in its use or enjoyment of any Brash Limited Service.
f. Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mailbombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.
g. Sending unsolicited bulk messages (spam), via any means, including, but not limited to, email, instant messenger services, and newsgroup postings. Brash Limited reserves the right to determine in its sole discretion and based on the information available what constitutes spam as well as what measures are necessary in response to spamming complaints. Clients should be aware of the UK Spam Act 2003. More information can be viewed via the following link – http://spamlinks.net/legal.htm#eu-uk
h. Sending solicited bulk messages, including but not limited to, the utilisation of services not designed to manage this functionality or where the FROM or REPLY TO email address is managed by Brash Limited, or any such actions which Brash Limited deems to potentially compromise or adversely affect service standards.
i. The engagement of Brash Limited services to promote deceptive and or illegal marketing practices, products or services.
j. In the case of the utilisation of Brash Limited’s Online Services which operate in a shared environment, we specifically prohibit the use of these services for development purposes. Brash Limited’s Online Services are designed specifically and should only be utilised for production purposes.

2.1 System and Network:

a. The deliberate transmission of computer viruses, worms, trojan software, or other malicious programs.
b. Interfering with, disrupting, or denying service including, but not limited to, using any technique to intentionally degrade or disable the delivery of any legitimate data (e.g., denial of service attacks).
c. Attempting to gain unauthorised entry to any site or network including, but not limited to, executing any form of network probing, monitoring or other information gathering on someone else’s site or network.
d. Attempting to circumvent host or user authentication or other security measures of any host, network or account.
e. Maintaining an Open Email Relay/Open Data Relay or allowing any data to be sent through one’s system by an unrelated third party, including, but not limited to, via open email gateways and open proxy servers.
f. Manipulate or bypass Brash Limited’s usage limits.

2.2 Mail Server Facilities:

a. Sending unsolicited mail messages.
b. Harassment including, but not limited to, language, frequency or size of messages.
c. Unauthorised use, or forging, of mail header information.
d. Solicitation of mail for any other E-mail address other than of the poster’s account or service with the intent to harass or to collect replies.
e. Creating or forwarding “chain letters” or other “schemes” of any type.
f. Use of unsolicited E-mail originating from within Brash Limited’s network, or networks of other Internet Service Providers, on behalf of, or to advertise any service hosted by Brash Limited, or connected via Brash Limited’s network.
g. Infringement of mail service restrictions as outlined in Section 1.4 of this document

2.3 Usenet Newsgroups:

a. Posting the same or similar messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroup (“Newsgroup spam”).
b. Posting excessive numbers of identical or similar messages to any number of Usenet newsgroups from Brash Limited’s network or networks of other Internet Service Providers on behalf of, to advertise, any service hosted by Brash Limited or sites hosted within, or via Brash Limited’s network.
c. Posting chain letters of any type.
d. Posting encoded binary files to newsgroups not named for that purpose
e. Cancellation or superseding of posts other than your own
f. Forging of header information of the poster’s account or service.

3. Additional Obligations:

3.1 Bulk Email:

Bulk email must provide recipients with an easy and effective mechanism for removal from bulk email lists. The source of the addressee’s address must be included in each bulk email message. Senders of bulk email must take effective steps to confirm that the actual owner of each email address on a list has agreed to receive bulk mailings from the sender before sending email to that list. Bulk Email facilites are catered for by Brash Limited’s List Manager product. The utilization of mail server SMTP services for the use of sending bulk emails is expressly prohibited.

3.2 Service Resale:

Service or any portion of Service cannot be resold unless authorised by Brash Limited in an executed Reseller account.

3.3 Password Protection:

The Customer is responsible for protecting passwords and for any authorised or unauthorised use of its systems and/or networks. All actions resulted from passwords being compromised will remain the sole responsibility of the Customer.

3.4 Content Protection:

The Customer must provide appropriate protection to prevent minors (persons under 18 years of age) from accessing any unsuitable material published via any Service.

3.5 Content Ownership:

The Customer is responsible for all content or information residing on, obtained or transmitted via the Service.

3.6 Vulnerable Systems:

Brash Limited reserves the right, without prior notice, to perform vulnerability tests on systems residing on its IP address range, which may be allocated for Customer use. The purpose of such testing includes, but is not limited to, testing of mail servers or proxy servers for unrestricted third party relaying. Brash Limited will employ all reasonable efforts to ensure that such testing
will be non-intrusive in nature, and will not adversely affect Service provided to Customer or compromise the security of Customer’s network.
The Customer is responsible for correcting any system vulnerability upon notification. Customer must terminate operations of a known compromised system.

3.7 Service Provided Equipment:

Customer is responsible for any modification of, alteration to, or other tampering with any hardware provided with the Service.

3.8 Backups:

It is the client’s sole responsibility to ensure that they maintain regular backups of their data. However Brash do backup all data and will restore files if lost due to Brash Limited’s actions. Brash can restore files for the customers, however their will be a charge.

4. AUP Enforcement

Violation of this AUP may subject Customer to international, federal, and/or state civil and/or criminal liability. Customer activity that facilitates a violation of this AUP by any party constitutes a violation of this AUP by Customer.
a. Brash Limited reserves the right to immediately, and without prior notice, filter, block, suspend, and/or terminate access to the Service at any time for any conduct that Brash Limited, in its sole discretion, determines violates, or may violate, this AUP and/or Terms and Conditions or is otherwise harmful to Brash Limited’s interests or the interests of others.
b. If access is terminated, Brash Limited, in its sole discretion, may refuse to accept all new e-mail sent to the terminated e-mail address and delete all or part of Customer’s data stored on Service.

5. Third Party Complaint Process:

If a Customer, or the public, wishes to notify Brash Limited of a potential violation of this AUP they should do so by sending an e-mail to support@brash.im.  Brash Limited will review such communication as quickly as possible and take action as deemed appropriate by Brash Limited.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

For Managed and Dedicated Server Clients (excluding Virtual Server Clients)

Brash Limited’s dedicated server and managed hosting service level agreement is a demonstration of our continued commitment to the very highest standards of customer service, support and care. Giving you complete peace of mind, it is total protection for your business.

100% Network Availability

Brash has built the network to safeguard all our clients. We guarantee network infrastructure availability 100% of the time. Network availability means all network infrastructure including routers, switches and cabling is working.

The Network infrastructure is defined as the portion of the network extending from the outbound port on your cabinet switch to the outbound port on the border router. Services or software running on your servers are not counted as part of the network.

We guarantee that when not undergoing scheduled maintenance, the network infrastructure will be available 100% of the time.

In the event of unplanned network failure we will refund every minute of connection up to a maximum value equal to your monthly subscription charge. Any credits offered under the SLA will be allocated against your account.

Two Hour Hardware Replacement

In the remote event of a server hardware failure that cannot be fixed, Brash guarantees that the hardware will be replaced within two hours of the problem being diagnosed. Hardware is defined as the processor(s), RAM, hard disk(s), motherboard, NIC card and other related hardware included with the server. This guarantee excludes the time required to rebuild a RAID array and the reload of certain operating systems, processors and applications. It does not include any bespoke server hosting solutions.

Labour and Parts Warranty and Replacement

Our parts and labour warranty covers all parts and labour costs involved in event of a related parts failure. Brash replace any failed component at no cost to the customer.

Support Guarantee

Thirty minute rapid response promise in working hours

Should you have a problem with your server you can rest assured that a qualified engineer will be working on the problem within 30 minutes of being notified. In the rare event that your problem cannot be solved within 30minutes you will be notified by telephone. We provide a detailed overview of the issue and let you know when you can expect it to be resolved. You are kept updated until the problem is resolved.

An engineer’s report is sent to you within 24 hours of completion.

24-hour Emergency Telephone Support

The Technical Support Team are available seven days a week, 365 days a year for 24-hour emergency telephone support.

John Phillip CEO Layer Seven Hosting;

I dont know about you, but after years of having my own websites and spending hours upon hours of time building them up to try and make me a little cash my host has a blip and my website goes down or performs like a dog! Not only do I get penalised by Google natural search all my adwords PPC was still being charged, it cost me an arm and a leg
I thought to myself, there must be someone out there that can offer me a better service without paying through the nose for it! Days of searching turned into weeks of searching and it finally dawned on me, if I wanted reliable hosting I would have to pay through the nose for it.

Having your website on a load balanced soltion can become extremely expensive, when I setup my first load balanced solution it cost in excess of $200,000 for the equipment alone and then ongoing charges of $5000 per month to house inside a datacenter.

Benefits of Load Balancing:
* Protect from any single point of failure
* 100% server uptime
* Seamless scalability
* Compatibility between different server hardware and software
* Downtime-free maintenance
* Extremely Fast serving websites
* PPC Adwords quality score improves
* End User experience (website visitor) far superior

Services load balance(able):
* HTTP (Web)
* HTTPS (SSL Web)
* Mail
* DNS
* Applications (java etc.)

Disadvantages of Load Balancing:
* Expensive
* Extensive Knowledge required

Virtual Hosting Advantages:
* Available from every tom, dick and harry website
* Cheap
* High amounts of slow resources available e.g unlimited diskspace, bandwidth etc.

Disadvantages of Virtual Hosting:
* Unreliable
* Slow
* Prone to downtime
* Single points of failure
* Often not correctly secured

Finally Along Came Layer Seven Hosting
I thought to myself, why do I want to put my business at risk and host all my websites on servers with no disaster recovery solution in place or multiple single points of failure. This is how Layer Seven Hosting was born, Layersevenhosting.com is a new company and the first company in the world to offer fully virtual CPANEL load balancing on the UK’s fastest network (graphite rack) not only that, this service has never been available to the virtual hosting market.

Load Balanced Hosting CHEAPER than virtual hosting?

After 6 years of having my first dream to be able to provide load balanced hosting cheaper than virtual hosting and people telling me it just can’t be done! I finally showed all the sceptics. I invested my own money into this new solution, and have managed to be able to offer you fully load balanced hosting at £1.50 ($2) per month