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The hosting company is telling us that their network is multi-homed, a blend of multiple bandwidth providers (level3, att, cogent...)

Is there any way we can test / verify their claim?

we want to make sure that its not just single homed with a cheap provider

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    Is a datacenter visit out of the question?
    – ceejayoz
    Apr 18, 2018 at 16:27
  • we can visit the data center. what should we be looking for?
    – Joe
    Apr 18, 2018 at 17:30
  • Signs they cheap out on stuff. Do they have good security? Cooling? Backup generators and batteries? Ask to talk to an on-site engineer and have them talk about where they get bandwidth from and how it's managed. etc.
    – ceejayoz
    Apr 18, 2018 at 17:47

2 Answers 2

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If you know any of their IPs, you can look up their AS (autonomous system) number and then use BGP looking glass at tier 1 providers to look up if your ISP is indeed directly peering with them.

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  • how do you look up AS number?
    – Joe
    Apr 18, 2018 at 18:57
  • ok I found the AS number but I don't see where you can enter the AS number on the Level3 Looking Glass page
    – Joe
    Apr 19, 2018 at 4:07
  • @Joe enter their IP and look for BGP paths - sequence of AS numbers ending with your ISP AS number. If they are peered directly then one of BGP paths will be short and consisting of their AS number and AS numbers belonging to Level3 only.
    – AlexD
    Apr 19, 2018 at 8:23
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Using traceroute from your server to various destinations you could see where (how close) the routes separate. If the multiple connections are used for load balancing single servers, you might be able to verify if this is true.

However, it's not that simple to verify if it's not true. It may well be that a single route is configured as a primary for your server, and secondary routes are only visible to you during a failure on the primary route. In this case you could just trust them until proven otherwise: losing reputation from this kind of claims could destroy their business.

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