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  1. #1
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    How to appear like you have your own data center!

    Hi there.

    We currently have a cluster of servers hosted somewhere and I was wondering if its possible to somehow appear like we have our own facility in a trace route.

    For example when you do a trace route on any of the domains hosted with us, the final hop leads to the people we are hosted with. How can we entirely eliminate our hosts name from that scenario. It should simply go from GBLX (Global Crossing) to our network.

    I think we probably need to do some switching, like colo a switch with them, is that correct? Or what about a router?

    Are there any other "tells" that show we are hosted with someone else?

    I just think it is more professional to appear as the top-level or top-tier hosting provider.

  2. #2
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    I think not. IMHO.

    Oh yeah the fact that if the UPS fails etc, etc.... It's pretty damn easy to tell if you don't have your own data center? But who knows maybe you have a few people working 9-5 just for phone support?
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  3. #3
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    you should register your own AS (autonomous system) and buy bandwidth directrly from some ISP (any local Level3 agent for example). You will need a router with BGP support ( or a switch that capable of BGP).
    http://bandwidth-control.net
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  4. #4
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    I think we probably need to do some switching, like colo a switch with them, is that correct? Or what about a router?
    That won't do it. You will just add another hop in your traceroute.

    Originally posted by farpost
    you should register your own AS (autonomous system) and buy bandwidth directrly from some ISP (any local Level3 agent for example). You will need a router with BGP support ( or a switch that capable of BGP).
    You do not need all that ...

    The only way to get rid of other company names but yours is to get rid of any middle man and deal directly with both the datacenter (Renting a space/colo) and the bandwidth provider. I am not sure if you are ready to do this at your level. When we started out, we tried our best to go direct and remove any middle man. We dealt directly with Internap for rack space and bandwidth. A lot more expensive for sure, but at least for us, dealing directly worths it.
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  5. #5
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    Originally posted by fastduke
    I think not. IMHO.

    Oh yeah the fact that if the UPS fails etc, etc.... It's pretty damn easy to tell if you don't have your own data center? But who knows maybe you have a few people working 9-5 just for phone support?
    We will have our own 24/7 support system in place. As does the company we are hosting with.

  6. #6
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    Originally posted by FHDave
    That won't do it. You will just add another hop in your traceroute.



    You do not need all that ...

    The only way to get rid of other company names but yours is to get rid of any middle man and deal directly with both the datacenter (Renting a space/colo) and the bandwidth provider. I am not sure if you are ready to do this at your level. When we started out, we tried our best to go direct and remove any middle man. We dealt directly with Internap for rack space and bandwidth. A lot more expensive for sure, but at least for us, dealing directly worths it.
    We are not quite ready for that step yet. We are comfortable with this hosting company because they offer us 24/7 live tech support and have been very reliable.

    Any other ideas?

    Is there anything specific I can ask my hosting company to do so that we can avoid having them show up in a traceroute?

  7. #7
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    Originally posted by rezilient
    Is there anything specific I can ask my hosting company to do so that we can avoid having them show up in a traceroute?
    I doubt it. Their name showing on the traceroute might be imposed by their upstream provider. For example, if you traceroute us, you will see our name on the traceroute. No matter how many times we tell Internap to change this, Internap just won't do it. And we have no control over the PTR record for the IP.

    Other than that, your host might have control over the PTR record and choose to put their names there for a reason. Thus, you asking them to remove it might not get approved since it will not only affect you but affect all of their customers as well.

    In any case, I don't think you have too many options. If you are not ready to remove middle men, then there is always the last option, admit to your customers about the fact why other company name is shown on the traceroute. There is nothing wrong about it.
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  8. #8
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    Why don't you just get them to set the reverse IP of the final router to be one that includes your domain name? That way the traceroute will appear to be you at least at some level.

    If you share that router, it's gonna be hard or impossible.

  9. #9
    Greetings Reza:

    Being as honest as possible is better than trying to create a perception that can be seen through.

    Thank you.
    ---
    Peter M. Abraham
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  10. #10
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    Hi Peter.

    You are on this board as well?

    Its not that we are trying to be dishonest, we just want to look as professional as possible. Of course, if asked, we will tell the customer the situation. We just thought this might be a good idea, so we don't lost potential customers to the "big guys".

  11. #11
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    Peter,

    Please hit me up when you have a minute.

    ICQ: 221948267
    Email: reza@rezilient.com

    Thanks!

  12. #12
    Why would you want to deceive customers like that?

  13. #13
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    Originally posted by ComputerGen
    Why would you want to deceive customers like that?
    You think its deceptive?

    I'll post this again:

    It is not that we are trying to be dishonest, we just want to look as professional as possible. Of course, if asked, we will tell the customer the situation. We just thought this might be a good idea, so we don't lose potential (savvy) customers to the "big guys".

  14. #14
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    Perhaps 'misrepresent' is a better term, but you have flatly stated that you want your appearance to differ from reality. If you gain larger clients based on that perception, be careful the "big guys" don't sue you when that separation of control causes an issue.
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  15. #15
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    I understand.

    I will ask my hosting company if at least we can have our domain name appear as one of the final hop in a traceroute. Then their name will still appear there, but so will ours.

  16. #16
    I guess it is ok if you tell them but still, not completely great in my opinion but thats just me.

  17. #17
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    If you don't have something and you want it to appear as if you have it, this is unprofessional in the first place. What makes you think it will enhance your professionalism?

    IMHO it is not proper and borders misrepresentation. Just live with what you have, provide valued added services and let your clients know your professionalism by the good work you do for them.

    It is definitely not a shame not owning a datacentre nor does it makes you less professional not owning one.

  18. #18
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    Sheez, give us a break. Why is it unprofessional to have their name appear as the last step in a traceroute? I think that's entirely reasonable if they have a rack.

    On the other hand, if they're making out they're a full-blown datacentre that does have an ethical downside. But I don't think they're going there anyway so no issue!

  19. #19
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    ComputerGen and boonchuan:

    Please read my post about showing up as the final traceroute hop. If you still have a problem with THAT, then I don't know what to say..

    brianoz:

    That's correct, we would NOT advertise ourselves as a full-blown data center. We simply were thinking about "masking" the identity of our hosting provider. But since it's too hard to do, and many think it's not ethical, appearing as the last hop seems to be the best option.

  20. #20
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    To have the last hop reverse as your company do looks better as they show you are in control. For the losing of clients to the datacentre, that's why value added services differentiate you from them. It is not difficult for someone with IT knowledge to know where you are getting your space.

  21. #21
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    The truth of the matter is that anybody who cares about if you have your own datacenter or not, is going to be able to figure out that you do not.
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  22. #22
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    Originally posted by justadollarhostin
    The truth of the matter is that anybody who cares about if you have your own datacenter or not, is going to be able to figure out that you do not.
    I cannot stress this enough.

    When I used to look for a host before I got into the business, the first thing I would check was that my website, mail and DNS were not being hosted on the same server. I don't care if someone's colocating a server or reselling accounts on their dedicated server or whatever as long as there's no single point of failure, because that's the first indication that whoever's trying to run the hosting business is a kid with no money who's trying to make a couple bucks on the side, not someone taking his job seriously and making a serious capital investment into all of his servers to do things "the right way."

  23. #23
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    Originally posted by Interkey JeffG
    I cannot stress this enough.

    When I used to look for a host before I got into the business, the first thing I would check was that my website, mail and DNS were not being hosted on the same server.
    Interesting - perhaps you could educate us as to how locating services on more than one machine makes a service inherently more robust?

    Sure, there are more machines, but complexity is just as likely (probably MORE likely!) to actually subtract from robustness. Sometimes putting everything on one server is actually a good solution, especially if care is taken in the server design. If I have my services spread across three servers, with your design, if I lose one server all my clients are impacted, especially if we lose the DNS or Mail servers. Granted, a multi-machine design might be superior, but it's not quite as trivial as that. For instance, locating DNS away from the server doesn't provide much if the server dies - web pages are still unavailable, email still can't be delivered, etc - that is, everything's still dead even though the other two servers haven't been impacted.

    Robustness is more about having disk redundancy, spare capacity, solid off-machine backups, and good security software with regular updates.

  24. #24
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    rezilient, Just ask your provider if they can change the PTR record for you. Alot of places will let you do that.. I'm not sure what some of these guys are talking about but it is pretty common..

  25. #25
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    Originally posted by brianoz
    Interesting - perhaps you could educate us as to how locating services on more than one machine makes a service inherently more robust?
    Scalability and security. It's inherently more difficult to tune for performance when you have to take more individual performance considerations into account, and it's more difficult to intrude upon a server when it's running fewer services. If a web server is running just HTTP and FTP daemons, you don't have to worry about an exploit in BIND, MySQL or Courier-IMAP providing a potential route into that given server.

    Sure, there are more machines, but complexity is just as likely (probably MORE likely!) to actually subtract from robustness. Sometimes putting everything on one server is actually a good solution, especially if care is taken in the server design. If I have my services spread across three servers, with your design, if I lose one server all my clients are impacted, especially if we lose the DNS or Mail servers. Granted, a multi-machine design might be superior, but it's not quite as trivial as that. For instance, locating DNS away from the server doesn't provide much if the server dies - web pages are still unavailable, email still can't be delivered, etc - that is, everything's still dead even though the other two servers haven't been impacted.
    Your notion of 'failure' is presumably 'hardware failure,' since there's no good reason a server dedicated to a single purpose should ever experience any downtime at all.

    However, it depends on who your clientele is, to be honest. The reasoning behind separate DNS hinges upon the notion of services being separated in the first place. If your clients are Joe Commodity Hosting Customer who uses his email to receive porn spam and Circuit City newsletters, he's probably not going to care very much. When your clients are businesses whose email is infinitely more important than their website and they need 99.99% availability, providing a separate, performance-tuned and scalable mail server with virtually no chance of downtime because of some sucker shared hosting customer that keeps maxing the CPU with a poorly-coded and poorly-understood PHP script is an awfully good idea.

    Robustness is more about having disk redundancy, spare capacity, solid off-machine backups, and good security software with regular updates.
    There's no doubting the validity of this (though I am confused about what you mean by "security software"). The only thing I'd like to add is that in addition to off-machine backups, they should also be off-site. If your datacenter blows up and burns to the ground, you should be able to get your business back online in one form or another within a day or two. This means, of course, backing up vital configuration in addition to files.
    Last edited by Interkey JeffG; 07-18-2005 at 09:19 AM.
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