At home (well, when I have a working net connection), if I connect PHP to the msn server on port 1863 I can connect fine..

But when I do it via my web hosting (shared hosting), it doesnt connect.

This is because of my web hosts firewall, yeah? Why would they block outgoing traffic? Is this normal?

This is very frustrating. I have made the ultimate framework for an online MSN messenger and done loads of work making the interface look and work exactly the same as the actual MSN.

But I cannae actually mix them together and sort out the communication because:

a) at home I can only connect to the internet via socks tethering on my mobile, so i cannae do much else than surf t'internet. every kind of routing i've tried has failed..

b) i cannae develop directly on my hosting because i cant seem to connect to the msn server from there

sFOSDNAFISDNGFD GIDNG DFIGNDF SDFGN DFG I WANTS PROPER INTERNETS!

Well, if I were a webhost I'd probably block all non standard web ports by default so yeah, probably standard.

I'm assuming you've just got normal shared hosting? Sounds like you're going a bit beyond their scope, to be honest, you're probably looking at more private server (A VPS for example) where they can open up ports for your IP and only your IP.