Status: Scheduled Maintenance
Reason: Network Upgrades
Date: Saturday, 20th September
Times: 00.00am - 04.00am local time

"In addition to the upgrades that are being performed on this occasion, we will also take this opportunity to migrate to to new routing equipment, and implementing further layer 2 networking changes to facilitate our upgrades.

• [#2786] Submitting a new helpdesk case could suggest FAQ's for different languages. (fixed)
• [#2778] The status icons in the rule overview are now consistent. (fixed)
• [#2633] In the logviewer sometimes a different timezone is shown. (fixed)
• [#2761] The custom reports can now include a list of rules for your reference. (fixed)
• [#2815] We now have a checkpoint in India (fixed)
• [#3036] We now have a monitoring station in Japan. (fixed)
• [#2817] We now have a checkpoint in South Africa. (fixed)
• [#2972] An extra checkpoint could be selected when using both 'master' and a checkpoint selection. (fixed)
• [#2099] You can now directly select 'Maintenance now' from the actions menu in the rule overview. (fixed)
• [#2873] When you had only viewer rights to a specific folder in someones account, selecting [all rules] did not work. (fixed)
• [#2199] The number of rules in your subsciption is shown in a better way. (fixed)
• [#2541] The German date format is wrongly used in some places in the site. (unable to duplicate)
• [#2855] The performance chart and logviewer now also show the resolve time if applicable. (fixed)

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Start of maintenance: 10:47 UTC
End of maintenance  : 11:57 UTC
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People using this station as a primary master may see an effect in the performance graphs since the services of this checkpoint were taken over by other machines on our network. This server is also our primary gateway for delivering pager (not SMS) messages, but this service was taken over automatically by a backup system. SMS alerting was not affected at all.

WatchMouse's extensive infrastructure provides the means to accurately monitor sites and web applications from the perspective of users based in different global locations. Such multi-point monitoring is imperative as site performance varies greatly depending on the location of the user (e.g. customers in the USA might quickly access a site, while for users in Germany, the same site has errors or a long load time). WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors explains that "Even if your site works well from your headquarters, customers may still have trouble reaching it from different external locations. As a slow or faulty site can frustrate users, damage the reputation of a company and result in lost sales, it is essential to monitor from more than one point."

Maintenance Details

Location: TPA (Tampa)
Date: 08-31-2008
Time: 00:00-02:00 Eastern
Impact: Brief outage, less than 10 minutes expected.
Device: core router
Reason: Permanent CAM repartitioning for additional IP routes. Reload is required.

The coverage and speed of this channel has always been high in Europe, Australia and most of Asia, but occasionally less so in the Americas. To ensure the highest reliability, we have contracts with five different SMS providers, offering redundant gateways to the mobile network.

• You can now restrict the monitoring of your site to a selection of our monitoring stations.
  As we are adding ever more of these stations, this has become a recurring feature request.
  How: In the [expert mode] of your rule settings, select 'Checkpoint selection'. This allows you to choose the checkpoints that will execute this rule. In case of a 'Master' sequence rule, additional checkpoints will only be used for second opinion checks. Make sure you select at least three stations for redundancy purposes.
• New IMAP and POP3 checkers now support SSL and can send 'round trip' test messages.
  These test messages are checked in the next monitoring cycle thus implementing a full round-trip email verification functionality
  How: In your rule settings for IMAP and POP3 rules select "SSL encryption". Make sure you are in [expert mode], where there will be an email address field. When an email address is found in this field, we send a test email to it in each cycle, and check for its correct delivery in the next cycle.
• New DNS checkers with many more features.
  Test for A, CNAME, MX, NS, PTR, and AAAA records and test these on our local resolvers, on your listed name servers, or on specific DNS servers. The existing dnsa and dnsns type rule will be replaced soon by this new dns type rule. How: In the [expert mode] of your rule settings type the name or IP address to be tested, select the record type, and click look-up. Now select the DNS servers that should be queried, set the other options and click save.
• In many cases, the log viewer will now also show the DNS resolve times for each check. As we move forward, we will add this for all check types.
• The web site now offers a more flexible subscription model, allowing customers to mix and match a wider range of different rule types and intervals.
• The reseller console has undergone major improvements making it easier for resellers to manage their customers' accounts.

In addition, many improvements have been made and several smaller issues have been resolved, please refer to the change log for details.

• It is now possible to restrict a rule to a subset of our stations.
• New IMAP and POP3 checkers that are able to do SSL and a send a round-trip test message.
• New DNS checkers with many more features.
• In many cases, the log viewer will now also show the DNS resolve performance for a check.
• The web site uses a more flexible subscription model now.
• For resellers it is now possible to use an applet to access their subaccounts.

In addition, the these smaller issues were resolved:

• Chicago, USA
• Zurich, Switzerland
• Mumbai, India
• Johannesburg, South Africa

The total number of checkpoints is now 30, and follows customer demand in these countries, as well as demands from companies operating sites that cater to a worldwide audience.

WatchMouse's monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of each nations' favorite sports site every five minutes. With no errors, 100% availability and a load time of less than 4 seconds, France's www.lequipe.fr ranked as the best sports site with an enviably low SPI of 203, while Spain's www.marca.com narrowly took second place over the Dutch www.vi.nl. Of the 16 monitored sites, only Turkey's spor.ekolay.net and Austrian's www.krone.at/sport were found to have 'serious user issues'.

The integration between WatchMouse and Nedstat should be of great benefit to WatchMouse customers who are using Sitestat Pro (or are considering using it) as it enables you to view your WatchMouse performance monitoring & Sitestat visitor statistics together. After making a few simple adjustments to your existing WatchMouse interface, you can view and compare both performance and visitor statistics, embedded in custom WatchMouse reports and thereby quickly spot any possible correlation between them e.g. an inverse relationship between your site's download time and your page views.

During the two month monitoring period, one of WatchMouse's monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Performance Index 'SPI' for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing' site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable', while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues'.

During the two month monitoring period, one of WatchMouse's monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing' site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable', while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues'.

• [#2743] Adding a description in a custom report results in an error. (fixed)
• [#2357] Links in performance chart can point to a different log entry. (fixed)
• [#2656] There is a JavaScript error on the my subscription page. (unable to duplicate)
• [#2742] The logviewer now shows some more details of a check (fixed)