Dns Performance

New functionality: Site Performance Index graph (2007-08-17)

A new graph type has been added to the monitoring graphs: Site Performance Index.

The new graph is available for all WatchMouse users as of now, and can be found on the graphs page. Select "Site Performance Index" from the first drop-down menu (Display).

This graph shows the WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) for the selected rule(s).
Note: Only rules of the type http and https are included in this graph.

The SPI graph enables you to compare the performance of your web servers. In order to make a fair comparison, the time-out for all rules should be the same.

The WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) contains information on both the availability (or uptime) and the speed of a website. That makes the SPI an accurate representation of the average "waiting time" for a visitor: the higher the SPI, the longer visitors have to wait, on average, for the site to load. A low SPI is good, i.e. the shortest bar in this graph represents the site with the fastest response time and shortest waiting time.

The SPI values in the graph indicate only a relative SPI of your own web sites. If you want to compare your sites to those of your competitors use the WatchMouse SPI performance benchmarking.

WatchMouse and Nedstat - Combining web site analytics and site performance (2008-06-02)

WatchMouse recently integrated with Nedstat's tool Sitestat. Nedstat is Europe's leading website analytics provider. Combining Nedstat's marketing intelligence with WatchMouse's website performance monitoring, enables customers to gain insight into the relationship between performance and visitor behavior.

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.

Having WatchMouse and Sitestat data presented in one custom report could help you identify when improvements to your site or infrastructure are needed, and as you implement improvements, you can track customer reaction and hopefully see a rapid return-on-investment with increased page views and online sales.

To find out how to integrate Sitestat data into your WatchMouse interface visit the Visitor statistics FAQs.

To view the brochure click here: Nedstat and WatchMouse partnership brings online marketing and technical performance data together [PDF file]

New: scheduled maintenance, work schedules, performance indicators (2006-11-28)

1. Set-up maintenance periods per rule

   In the monitoring settings page, in "expert mode", you can now:

   • Start and duration of the maintenance period
   • Optionally set the repeat period (daily, weekly, monthly)

   During the maintenance period, WatchMouse will continue monitoring your servers but errors are not included in downtime calculation, and alerts are not sent. In the performance chart and logs, the checks while in maintenance are marked as such (see legend). The maintenance periods will be made visible in the graphs too.

2. User defined performance limits

   You can now define on a per-rule basis the limits for good, poor, and bad performance next to the existing ('timeout'). These limits can be entered in the monitoring settings page, in "expert mode". These limits are used in the performance chart.

3. Work schedule options in your contacts

   You can now specify which days, and which hours people in you contact list are on duty:

   • When not on duty, no alerts will be sent to this contact person
   • This is also useful for group alerts, with non-overlapping schedules
   • A contact can now also be set to 'inactive' manually, just like the monitoring rules
   • Inactive contacts do are not included when computing the maximum number of contacts you can still use

   You can set the work schedule in your contacts page, after selecting one of your existing contacts or entering a new contact.

WatchMouse introduces Site Performance Index (2009-05-14)

new industry gauge offers complete overview of website performance

WatchMouse, the website monitoring company, has launched the WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI). The index acts as a gauge for measuring the performance of websites. It gives a complete overview of visitors’ experiences when using a website in terms of both the speed and availability.

WatchMouse measures the SPIs of the major players in 30 different industry sectors including banking, travel, insurance and logistics. The resulting reports are published monthly on www.watchmouse.com/SPI

The SPI measures the waiting times experienced by visitors accessing a site. The longer the loading time or the worse the availability of a web page, the higher the final score and the lower the level of visitor satisfaction. Sites with an SPI of 1,000 or less are performing well whilst those companies that score above 1,500 have work to do.

WatchMouse’s SPI site currently contains reports from 30 different sectors across five countries. Summaries of the reports can be accessed free of charge from the WatchMouse website and full reports can be ordered on the site.

The reports are refreshed every quarter and offer extensive trend analysis, background information and complete score tables with measurement results for the companies monitored in each sector, and by country. Companies can also, for a fee, order benchmark reports which clearly show how their own corporate site is scoring in relation to those of their competitors. In addition, tailor-made reports can be ordered, in which companies can specify their own lists of ‘peers’.

“Good website performance is crucial as recent research by Jupiter Research demonstrates that customers can give up after waiting for just four seconds,” said Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse. “We are also seeing a shift taking place whereby, alongside availability, loading speeds are also being included in service level agreements (SLAs).”

“The SPI reports enable companies to find out whether their SLAs are in fact being achieved, and compare this with the website performance of their competitors. In this way, they can easily assess whether there is room for improvement,” he explained.

"Want to know the performance of your website?" (2006-11-29)

- WatchMouse launches Site Monitor for PC users –

Netherlands, November 29, 2006 - WatchMouse launches its free WatchMouse Site Monitor for Windows. This application provides PC users insight into the availability of their website(s) at all times. The Site Monitor can be downloaded for free at the WatchMouse website. Installing it only takes a minute.

The Site Monitor checks your company's site or your personal website at fixed intervals (5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes) from your own pc. When an error is found, or after 2 to 5 consecutive errors, you are alerted and the error is verified by all WatchMouse monitoring stations. Also, the availability of the site in the last 72 hours is shown in a performance chart.

The Site Monitor can be combined with a free WatchMouse account. This gives you the following extra benefits:

• The application can show you the monitoring results of all websites included in the account
• The monitoring is not only done from your own PC, but also from more than 20 WatchMouse checkpoints worldwide
• The application shows performance charts for any period in the Site Monitor
• In case of an alert the WatchMouse site is launched for more details
• Monitoring continues even when the PC is without an internet connection

In exchange for these extra benefits WatchMouse asks you to place a small uptime banner on the sites that are monitored.

The WatchMouse Site Monitor for Windows can be downloaded for free at http://www.watchmouse.com/windows/site_monitor.php Installing it only takes a minute.

WatchMouse releases new Site Performance Monitoring Widget for Apple users (download widget) (2006-10-22)

WatchMouse releases 2.0 widget for dashboard, aimed at Internet site performance monitoring.

NETHERLANDS, 2006-10-23. By means of the widget Apple users can get direct insight into the performance of their own Internet site. The widget can be downloaded for free from the Apple website.

In 2002, WatchMouse (www.watchmouse.com) introduced a new concept for Internet site monitoring. By means of ongoing simulation of Internet visitors the performance of sites and servers is verified. If a site is not responding, an alert message is sent immediately through SMS, pager, Instant Messenger or e-mail. The sites are checked from over twenty monitoring stations worldwide. This is done 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The service is completely web based: customers don't have to install software, everything is 100% self-service, which keeps the costs low.

The three founders of WatchMouse, Niels Eijsbroek, Stan van de Burgt and Mark Pors are enormous Mac-fans with a total of twenty Macs in their possession. The monitoring widget is quite unique: it is a combination of a desktop and a hosted application. When the widgets detects a problem with the site it is checking, it alerts the user with a 'beep', followed by the launch of a web browser, which is directed to a web application on watchmouse.com. There the site is checked from over 20 different locations worldwide.

Worldwide monitoring

The new version (2.0.4) brings continuous performance monitoring, even when the Mac is not connected to the Internet, by connecting the widget to a WatchMouse account (free or paid). In October 2005, WatchMouse released the first version of this widget, which was downloaded over 10.000 times.

WatchMouse has made the widget available free of charge "because we have become addicted to it, ever since we started using the first beta version of the widget", says creative director Niels Eijsbroek. "We give the widget away for free mainly for the fun part. And of course it's also important to bring site performance monitoring to the attention of our fellow Apple-users."

The free WatchMouse site monitoring widget can be downloaded from the Apple website:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/watchmousesitemonitor.html

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in nine languages, and analysis are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

In 2005, WatchMouse was voted a Deloitte Rising Star in the Netherlands, as part of the Fast 50 awards; the list of the 50 fastest growing technology companies.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com

WatchMouse's Website Performance Benchmark enables us... (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse's Website Performance Benchmark enables us to confirm on behalf of our clients, any suspected access issues in addition to showing the overall performance compared to the benchmark in our client's sector.

Managing Director, Red Dog Communications

Website performance is the key to customer satisfaction (2007-06-27)

How often have you typed in the Google URL and received a page that will not load? I am willing to bet that this is a rare occurrence. Despite its busy traffic, Google is a textbook example of a web site that has almost perfect performance and therefore serves a great number of satisfied customers. The market share of the search engine is a resounding confirmation of this. You are assisted quickly, so you come back sooner. Research conducted by JupiterResearch has revealed that visitors to a site only have 4 seconds of patience. If the site has not been loaded by that time, they leave. Error messages also prompt potential customers to go to the competition.

Why do organisations still devote so little attention to the effective availability of their site? Performance is the key to satisfied customers. For many companies, their web site is the face of the organisation. Consumers and also business users of the Internet use the wealth of information on the web to compare purchasing options. It is of immeasurable importance that they are also actually able to find what they are looking for. If this is not possible at one company, competitors are straining at the leash to offer their services through a correctly functioning site.

Coming back to the praise that we had for Google, we see that the search engine has made significant investments in the availability of its web site. The page is run by several machines at various sites. If one crashes there are enough back-up servers that can take over the traffic flows to guarantee optimum performance. In addition, the search machine invests a great deal of time and money in the right hardware and people. Although the site has a difficult task – searching through an index of billions of documents – it is almost always available and loads fast.

The actual site is unspectacular in construction. This applies to the majority of sites with a high level of availability. Simple sites such as the news site NU.nl are almost always easy to access. Nevertheless, it is not only the layout of the site that determines how the web page performs. Too many photos, long symbols and frills make web sites slower to respond. The fact that the ‘back end’ of the site is not efficiently programmed also contributes to longer loading times. Frequent consultation of background databases is also detrimental to the speed of the page.

Where it often goes wrong is when different people are working on a site, thereby disturbing the links between the various elements. The different parts of the site will work correctly, but the site as a whole will fail to perform. This means long waiting times for people who want to use the services of a company.

Service providers at the upper end of the market are becoming increasingly aware of this. The contracts that they use frequently include a service level agreement (SLA) for the part for which they are responsible. Nevertheless, they regularly make mistakes due to the fact that the promised performance is not subsequently verified (by an independent party). Although it is now essentially part of the contract, there is insufficient actual verification. Ideally, web site performance should become a permanent component of a contract. In addition, clear internal agreements must be made on who has final responsibility for the efficient loading and availability of a site.

Regular testing is also essential for the facilitation of good availability. This will prevent a great deal of errors, keeping the site up and running at crucial times. The storm that blew over the Netherlands at the end of January was a good opportunity to see which sites were prepared for extreme loads and which were not. The site of the Dutch weather institute, KNMI, was almost unreachable, while some logical thought could have protected them from this eventuality. If you know that a major storm is heading towards the country you can be sure that people will search for information on the weather and roads on the Internet. Sites such as those of KLM and Schiphol were also unreachable, while the specially created site Crisis.nl, which had been kept as simple as possible, was able to serve a large number of people.

Including ‘stress tests’ in a SLA or conducting them regularly in-house is therefore to be recommended. Companies can easily take control by ensuring that their service provider executes this type of test or by putting their own site under pressure. This is the best method of checking whether your web site can handle a sudden increase in visitor numbers. It is also good to know whether the servers on which your site is running actually ensure that your page is always available and loads correctly. For companies, it is crucial to see when they are off air. This can save them a large amount of money every year and will also reduce the number of irritated visitors to the site. This is how you keep customers satisfied and keep the company running.

Mark Pors
Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse

WatchMouse provides site performance monitoring and stress test services

Analysis of High-Performance Access CGI Session Identifier Session Hijacking Vulnerability (2008-12-15)

Analysis of High-Performance Access CGI is prone to a session-hijacking vulnerability.

An attacker can exploit this issue to gain access to the affected application with the privileges of the hijacked user.

Analysis of High-Performance Access CGI 4.01 and prior are vulnerable.

BMC Performance Manager PatrolAgent.EXE Memory Corruption Vulnerability (2007-04-19)

BMC Performance Manager is prone to a memory-corruption vulnerability.

An attacker can exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code within the context of the affected application. Failed exploit attempts will result in a denial of service.

European Performance Systems Probe Builder Denial of Service Vulnerability (2008-07-29)

European Performance Systems (EPS) Probe Builder is prone to a denial-of-service vulnerability

An attacker may leverage this issue to crash the affected computer, denying service to affected users.

Versions prior to Probe Builder A.02.20.901 on Windows are vulnerable.