I've seen real-world connectivity, latency, and bandwidth problems crop up with enough frequency to be a real problem on a major budget "cloud" provider. It loo

I've seen real-world connectivity, latency, and bandwidth problems crop up with enough frequency to be a real problem on a major budget "cloud" provider. It looked liked they'd badly cheaped out on their peering agreements. Move the exact same workload to the industry's default but much more expensive choice, and the problems vanish entirely. This is, unfortunately, one of those things that's really hard to judge about a hosting provider unless you have direct experience using them "at scale", as they say. Nobody puts that stuff on a sales page spec sheet or comparison grid. Could I save money by hosting on real hardware at some popular, cheapish server-leasing place? Or colocating at one? Or hosting out of my own basement!? Maybe. Would it cause some users to consistently see dial-up speeds and dropped connections on gigabit Internet service because of either some quirk of routing, or bad peering agreements? Who knows!