When shopping for a new host, I want to do some testing on a few of a few of a provider’s currently hosted clients. Is there any way that a person can come up with a list of sites hosted by a particular provider? If I can do this and get an assessment of average response times, I am thinking I could save the hassle of signing up and using their 30 day trial period to do my assessment, only to cancel in two weeks if it doesn’t measure up.

Ask them?

Sometimes they will have a list of people who approved of them giving out domain names for other people to check out.

Some hosts won't do it though. I guess you could manually try IPs around their block.. haha. : )

A few methods exist, but here's a simple way:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/

- What's that site running : enter the provider
- in the resulting display, among other things, you'll get a list of
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for XXXXX
Click on a link under the column Netblock Owner
- you'll see a number of hosts for different domains - go to town, have fun.

Note though that for smaller resellers you won't really be able to tell who is running who. You may be looking at domains hosted by other resellers of a hoster / reseller. But to look at the big guys or just get an idea how a number of hosts are behaving from a particular hosting company or NOC, its a start.


Checking out the network access:
If you don't happen to already have hosts all over the place on different networks, and want to check out the routes to the provider to see how robust their network access is, use this tool:

http://www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/trace.pl

Not all the sites listed are active however you'll be able to find a number that are. Pick a wide range of geographically diverse sites and then investigate the routes reported back.

Have fun.

Originally posted by mwatkins
A few methods exist, but here's a simple way:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/

- What's that site running : enter the provider

Hi mwatkins,
Thanks. Can you help me on this... I went there and entered my current provider viaverio.com (very good) and at [What's that site running?] I entered "site contains"="viaverio.com" and the result does not give me a list of any of sites they host.

just enter viaverio.com within the form field....

I think most wouldnt object if you just emailed and asked, if they dont have any info onsite.
:)

Originally posted by Martie
I think most wouldnt object if you just emailed and asked...

Yes, but that wouldn't mean much would it? I mean, you would not give me url's to check out if you new they were on one of your overloaded servers - I am afraid many providers would publish examples of their good performers. That is exactly why I am asking this question. I want to avoid that. I want to know how to discover on my own, a random selection of the provider's clients. Then I can check them out and even write to the client's webmaster to ask his/her oppinion.

Anybody else? Is there an easy way for me to come up with a list of about 5 sites hosted by a certain provider?

Thanks!

Go here: http://combat.uxn.com/

Do a tracert on a host, take *****.com for example. That IP address for that site is 63.249.159.33 Then type that in the IP whois box and it will tell you who owns that IP block and what the range is. This block ***** owns is:

63.249.128.0 - 63.249.255.254

So you can type in any number that has this:

63.249.AAA.BBB

AAA = You can put any number from 128 to 255 here.
BBB = You can put any number here up to 254.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by mwatkins
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/
- What's that site running : enter the provider
- in the resulting display, among other things, you'll get a list of
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for XXXXX
Click on a link under the column Netblock Owner
- you'll see a number of hosts for different domains

Ah! I got it! I was incorectly clicking on the column heading. That is a really cool tool. Thanks!!

Originally posted by Curtis Stevens [snip] type that in the IP whois box and it will tell you who owns that IP block and what the range is. [snip]
Thanks to you too Curtis!! I see that it is no sweat to do just what I wanted. COOL!!!