Is it rude to ask for a test IP before ordering?

I have been in this business for twenty years and I am growing tired of the dance. Back when we ran actual bare metal out of actual closets, you shook a man's hand and you trusted the route. Now kids these days want a looking glass, a speedtest, a traceroute, and probably your grandmother's maiden name before they will part with five dollars.

I asked OVHcloud for a test IP last Tuesday. Sales went dark. No reply. I followed up. Nothing. Mark my words, this is a provider that has something to hide—oversold transit, congested peering, or worse. The ones who refuse are the ones who should worry.

Yet I see the other side. The tire-kickers who burn ten hours of support time and buy nothing. The "testers" who are really competitors mapping your network. I get it.

Still. A test IP is due diligence. Any shop worth its salt lists them unprompted. The rest deserve what they get when the complaints start.

https://www.ovhcloud.com

Actually, "ones" is vague. You mean "providers." Also, you wrote "twenty years" but "20" in the next clause is inconsistent.

A test IP costs nothing to provide. Hiding it signals either incompetence or deception. Semicolons separate related clauses, which this situation exemplifies. I have requested test IPs from seventeen hosts this quarter. Three refused. All three later had routing issues reported on this forum.

The correlation is not coincidence.

Bro bro bro. Very very simple gan. If provider scared scared to give test ip means network very very bad bad. No need think think too much.

I ask Vultr before, they give give straight away. Ping ping good good. I buy buy immediately.

Hetzner? I ask ask. Ghost ghost. Later later I see see review review. Packet loss loss very very bad. Lucky lucky I no buy buy.

Test ip is cheap cheap way to check check. Only lazy lazy provider no give give...

This is the German engineering approach to due diligence and it is one I have always advocated for because in my experience running a smallHostingOperation for regional clients the TestIP is the Minimum viable product demonstration and any provider that does not offer it freely is demonstrating a LackOfTransparency that should concern any prospective customer especially those of us who require stableRouting for our end users and I must say that I recently encountered a provider whose sales representative became defensive when I requested basicLookingGlassAccess and this defensiveness was in itself a RedFlag that caused me to terminate the conversation and seek services elsewhere which proved wise because another forum member later reported catastrophicPacketLoss on that same network.

The Long term business relationship depends on trust and trust begins with the first interaction.

Test IP? Reasonable. Ghosting? Not.

Twenty years? Seen worse.

Perkele.

InterServer lists IPs unprompted now: https://www.interserver.net Orders up forty percent. Coincidence? No.

Server good. Transparency better. Price irrelevant if network lies.

OVHcloud going dark on a tuesday seems like a staffing issue, not policy

InterServer listing IPs unprompted is smart, forty percent is a solid jump