Anon providers?

**WipeOut** · 2nd February 2005

I have found it is very easy to workout the upstream providers of various web hosts and colo providers through a simple traceroute.. All the routers are named in the domain of the provider who themselves are usually web hosts and usually offer more attractive pricing than the reseller.. So a potential customer with the smallest amount of technical ability can quite easily be lost to the reseller hosts colo provider..

Are there any providers of colo facilities that remain anonymous in terms of traceability by clients of resellers??

**illusion** · 2nd February 2005

Only way to get away from this I guess is setting up your own network, rather than using your colo providers. This makes it a fair bit more expensive of course, as you will have to buy a couple of BGP capable routers, switches and get a couple of transit feeds. You could get a Layer 2 circuit straight into your own switch so you dont have to buy any routers, but then you don't have any redundancy, but it would work as a starter.

Dan

**adamsmith** · 2nd February 2005

Easy - don't buy transit from a direct competitor or at least not one cheaper than yourselves

.

**chrisbyrd** · 3rd February 2005

you could use a provider who has reasonably anonymous rdns on their routers

depending on where you are, someone like http://www.rapidswitch.com/ would be a good idea

they do colocation, dedicated servers, transit etc, but their network (i believe all of it, but it might just be the bits i've seen) is 'unbranded' .

eg - my tracert to them:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms netgear.router.harcourt [10.10.10.1]
2 24 ms 22 ms 24 ms cl2tp-1.sz-e.murphx.net [62.69.62.163]
3 24 ms 25 ms 25 ms 62.69.62.161
4 25 ms 25 ms 40 ms bgp-03.core.murphx.net [62.69.62.3]
5 36 ms 34 ms 25 ms br-sov-01.caladan.net.uk [80.71.4.33]
6 56 ms 26 ms 32 ms lipex1.th.newnet.co.uk [193.109.219.42]
7 27 ms 28 ms 27 ms ge-core01.rbi.rapidswitch.com [213.228.193.1]
8 28 ms 34 ms 28 ms 195.242.214.146

just an idea

**othelloRob** · 3rd February 2005

Chris - so which bit of hop 7 is unbranded ? the traceroute clearly shows you as a 49p customer, who got their IPs from PX.

The simple answer to the original question is ..

No, it is not possible to "hide" the information.
If all you are doing is reselling someone elses systems and adding a markup, anyone remotely cluefull will work that out and go "upstream" of you.
Better that you add some "value" to your offering - to give them a reason to pick you.

**WipeOut** · 3rd February 2005

othellotech,

Thats what I figued, so the only real way would be to go upstream myself and that would be very expensive for us since we are just getting into this game and also would require quite a learning curve to setup..

So wer'e going to have to try and find the value offering which isn't going to be easy since there isn't a whole lot of value left in this game.. It seems that everything has been made free or given in OTT quantities..

I will have to give it some thought..

**Karl** · 3rd February 2005

WipeOut - I think you are worrying a little too much, your average customer, doesn't know how to work out if you're reselling someone elses services, and to be honest, a lot of the time they won't care, as long as you convince them you can provide a solid service and then do so.

**chrisbyrd** · 3rd February 2005

Rob

i was just pointing out that if were to go to www.rapidswitch.com then you wouldnt immediately be presented with a website offering competing services for sale

of course - you'd be able to find out with a bit of digging

its just not quite as blatant as seeing 49p in the trace

**othelloRob** · 3rd February 2005

but you *will* be presented with it - just as you were when 49p appeared in the trace - it's only that Ed's not loaded up the website yet

the bigger question is why is it an issue - the concept of simply reselling someone elses stuff with a markup is long over - hence the comment about value - VARs is a good business model, plenty of room for niche - also, almost as Karl said - customers either often dont care about your upstream, or where they do simply need explaining what you offer above and beyond going to the upstream direct.

You can get hosting from 1000 different places - half of them are @ racksh!te - it's the "added" stuff that differentiates IMHO

**James[UH]** · 3rd February 2005

THIS USER HAS BEEN GAGGED BY THE FORUM HOSTS FOR SPAM OR BREAKING THE RULES...
User will be ungaged in around 91 hours from this post.

**othelloRob** · 3rd February 2005

people buy them because they see the headline price - its actually cheaper to buy from one of those than the higher level - so the *value* they're adding is monetary - Yahoo makes $2 loss on the sale of each domain

**James[UH]** · 3rd February 2005

THIS USER HAS BEEN GAGGED BY THE FORUM HOSTS FOR SPAM OR BREAKING THE RULES...
User will be ungaged in around 91 hours from this post.

**neilrbowen** · 3rd February 2005

we offer connectivity direct off a level(3) Vlan for people who want to be anon'd

Just have a look around it is possible, but generaly is hassle.

**edb49** · 3rd February 2005

The RapidSwitch.com site is in design at the moment, and will never offer products that compete with our customers. So for example, our customers who have racks & transit with us sell dedicated servers and colocation. If you call up RapidSwitch for colocation, you'll have to take a full rack, and there are no plans for RS to do dedicateds.

**Karl** · 3rd February 2005

Playing devils advocate here, but a 2s search on Google turns up RapidSwitch in connection with servers etc. by way of 49pence.com

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