Do some research on the provider and see who they are connected to w/r/t upstream bandwidth. They should tell you without hesitation if there is nothing to hide, but you can always find out as well by a little sleuthing:
- Find an IP in their block (try their web and mails servers, see if they self-host or push that off to something else).
- Do a whois on it to get the size of the block and make sure it isn't a small /28 or something dodgy
- Then BGP traceroute to the IP from a looking glass like Looking Glass - Hurricane Electric (AS6939) and find out how the connection is from major providers to them, and note the ASN that advertises the IP space
- If they are a decently connected colo provider they should have their own ASN and you can explore in the looking glass what upstream connections that ASN is seen on.
- If your provider is just using the space of the actual colo/facility they are in and getting IP space from them as well as power and rackspace the RDNS will show their name but the ASN is going to be that provider's own and your colo provider is using their network to provide your bandwidth. That isn't a bad thing exactly, just there are more middlemen if there is a problem and your host is going to have to be more involved to track down problems upstream if there is anything.
Since you main goal is connectivity from home to the site, see what the trace to there and pings are like. If it is bad then find someone else.
Most of the uber cheap colos are in "shared space" and I have seen everything all over the map in terms of shared space. Some are nice fully locked 48U+ cabinets with just a mix of end clients in there, but ... I wish I could legally post pictures of the horror show at some sites with rows of 2 post telco racks with a shelf every few feet and piles of servers just sitting on each other and cords cascading down to the floor. Anytime anything has to get touched in the area things go down because it is just so ghetto.
In a ghetto setup like that, not only does the staff / owners not care enough to do a passable job, but if they allow other clients to be in the area nothing stopping them from bumping into your stuff and knocking it off the pile of servers or disconnecting it.
Also be careful with how they say they meter your bandwidth. If they say you have a 1G port but only 10TB of "transfer" then you can burn through that in a day or two and then see how painful the overage is going to be. Also because they may offer you a 1 or 10G port doesn't have any relation to if they have that much upstream bandwidth - they could be on a oversubscribed 50M line from their provider and selling you that they have 1G ports.
- Find an IP in their block (try their web and mails servers, see if they self-host or push that off to something else).
- Do a whois on it to get the size of the block and make sure it isn't a small /28 or something dodgy
- Then BGP traceroute to the IP from a looking glass like Looking Glass - Hurricane Electric (AS6939) and find out how the connection is from major providers to them, and note the ASN that advertises the IP space
- If they are a decently connected colo provider they should have their own ASN and you can explore in the looking glass what upstream connections that ASN is seen on.
- If your provider is just using the space of the actual colo/facility they are in and getting IP space from them as well as power and rackspace the RDNS will show their name but the ASN is going to be that provider's own and your colo provider is using their network to provide your bandwidth. That isn't a bad thing exactly, just there are more middlemen if there is a problem and your host is going to have to be more involved to track down problems upstream if there is anything.
Since you main goal is connectivity from home to the site, see what the trace to there and pings are like. If it is bad then find someone else.
Most of the uber cheap colos are in "shared space" and I have seen everything all over the map in terms of shared space. Some are nice fully locked 48U+ cabinets with just a mix of end clients in there, but ... I wish I could legally post pictures of the horror show at some sites with rows of 2 post telco racks with a shelf every few feet and piles of servers just sitting on each other and cords cascading down to the floor. Anytime anything has to get touched in the area things go down because it is just so ghetto.
In a ghetto setup like that, not only does the staff / owners not care enough to do a passable job, but if they allow other clients to be in the area nothing stopping them from bumping into your stuff and knocking it off the pile of servers or disconnecting it.
Also be careful with how they say they meter your bandwidth. If they say you have a 1G port but only 10TB of "transfer" then you can burn through that in a day or two and then see how painful the overage is going to be. Also because they may offer you a 1 or 10G port doesn't have any relation to if they have that much upstream bandwidth - they could be on a oversubscribed 50M line from their provider and selling you that they have 1G ports.