Addmember said:
Is there a way to tell a reseller from a genuine provider?
What makes you think a reseller isnt "genuine" ? Many resellers provide an excellent value-add service in supporting their clients and providing additional services that their "upstream provider" would not offer.
The real thing is whether the provider (be they reseller or whatever) is *honest* with their potential and actual customers - every day I see sites of hosts claiming "their datacentre this" and "their cisco network" and "their bgp routers" etc, when any level of investigation would show they have a sigle dedicated server with "cheap-sh!t-dedis" etc.
Traceroutes can tell a lot, looking up the IP netblock can tell a lot, investingating who routes their IPs can tell a lot.
There is *NOTHING* wrong with being a reseller, and nothing *WRONG* with hosting with a reseller.
As with all things in business, it should come down to you paying a price you feel is fair, for a service you feel is acceptable, on a product you feel matches your needs.
Yes there is the "risk" that a problem may be out of the resellers control. But similarly if they have backups, a well though out business continuity plan and your best interests at heart, they could move to another provider almost instantly, and be up and running elsewhere if the brown-and-sticky has gone fanward.
I know some resellers that are more succesful than their upstreams, and others that are so clueless its just a matter of time before they fold and screw over their clientbase. Similarly I know "real" hosts that do very well, and others that teeter in the edge of bankruptcy every month. The problems are "business" issues not really realted to them being or not being a reseller.