Monitoring Website

Launching WatchMouse Laboratories: the tech playground for website monitoring (2009-10-08)

We just launched WatchMouse Laboratories (labs.watchmouse.com)

This blog is the experimental outlet of the WatchMouse engineering team. Here we will share our thoughts on website monitoring, publish experimental features, hand out beta-invites and ask for your opinion.

Our first post is "Investigating IPv6 Website Monitoring", explaining about our work to be ready for the IPv6 Internet. As you might know IP addresses are running out, and many efforts are being made to replace the current Internet Protocol (IPv4) with version 6, which allows for an almost unlimited number of IP addresses.

Of course this will also have consequences on Website Monitoring of IPv6 enabled web sites and servers. WatchMouse is currently working to make this part of their standard offering, and some of our thoughts and findings are shared on our new labs blog.

Read more about IPv6 Website Monitoring on our labs site, and feel free to leave a comment!

New feature included in all website monitoring subscriptions: Root Cause Analysis (2009-10-18)

Today we release the Root Cause Analysis feature for all our website monitoring customers, at no additional cost, in all subscriptions.

What is Root Cause Analysis?

Until now, any issues found by WatchMouse were logged in your account and you were alerted according to your settings and preferences. Although the information in the alert tells you what the problem is, a more detailed analysis, or Root Cause Analysis, can be helpful in determining the actual cause of the issue.

How does it work?

When an issue is found and has been confirmed by another monitoring station (if needed), the Root Cause Analysis is triggered. Currently the Root Cause Analysis entails:

• Perform a traceroute from two monitoring stations to find the actual routes that were used in the tests.
• A screen dump (image) of the web page in question (for http(s) rules only) in two sizes
• The source HTML of the web page (for http(s) rules only) if available.
• Relevant checks: results from previous and subsequent checks for the same rule.
• A detailed analysis of your domain name set-up
• DNS analysis from two monitoring stations to see if the host names are resolved properly.

In your logs you will find this icon right next to the (confirmed) error pointing to the Root Cause Analysis report. Note that this icon will be present only for the first confirmed error in a straight sequence of errors. There is another icon that might appear indicating that the log file has additional information (e.g. for http(s), scripting, or dns/domain rules) that looks like this .

Getting started

If you had any errors reported recently there may already be Root Cause Analysis reports available in your account. To check it out go to the logs and select 'Root Cause Analyses' from the 'Display' menu and click [show].
If there are entries in the resulting list, simply click on the Root Cause Analysis icon to inspect the details.

When an alert email is sent, this will now contain a direct link to the Root Cause Analysis report.

LB Icon chooses WatchMouse for independent website monitoring (2005-01-31)

Customer websites verified from the visitors' perspective

LB Icon and WatchMouse have signed a contract for the continuous monitoring of the websites and services of LB Icons' customers. Using the WatchMouse services, LB Icon expects to raise its service level even higher.

The Application Management & Hosting Services (AM&HS) group of LB Icon maintains the administration and management of servers and applications of a large number of (international) clients. This makes AM&HS responsible for the performance and availability of the websites and Internet applications.

Using the WatchMouse services, AM&HS will instantly be aware of upcoming and/or acute incidents related to the websites of its clients, and can, as a result, resolve problems in a short time frame.
The websites and their functionality are checked for accessibility, speed and conformance from different locations around the world. Because the websites are checked in the same way that visitors are experiencing them, incidents will be detected at an early stage. Also, using WatchMouse's objective periodical reports, it is possible to see if the performance is in accordance with the agreed service levels (SLAs).

Eveline Aendekerk, MD a.i.: "The door of a shop should never be jammed, websites and the functionality on those sites should simply be accessible and available. Our clients should be able to rely on this completely, so they can focus on their primary business processes, such as communication, interaction and sales.
We chose WatchMouse because of their expertise, and also because of the simplicity and user-friendliness of their system and services".

Stan P. van de Burgt, one of the founders of WatchMouse: "I find it a powerful gesture that LB Icon doesn't just monitor the websites of their clients, but that they selected an external party for this, and on top of that give their clients access to the results. Many companies where the website plays an essential role in business, don't have any awareness of this. They have no idea of the risks and the resulting damage, until the day comes that things actually go wrong"

About Lost Boys

For 11 years Lost Boys has been a major service provider in the area of (mobile) Internet. Lost Boys offers a combination of strategy, design, technical development, implementation, application management and hosting of Internet- and mobile solutions. The Amsterdam based corporation is part of the Lost Boys/IconMedialab Group and is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and Euronext Amsterdam. Lost Boys operates with 600 employees in 7 countries, both in Europe and the United States.

http://www.lostboys.nl/
http://iconmedialab.com/

About WatchMouse

WatchMouse is a service of RoundZero. Since 2001, WatchMouse has been checking Internet sites and e-commerce applications of major companies all over the world. The WatchMouse services are available in 8 languages and analysis is performed through its worldwide monitoring network at different locations and networks. WatchMouse has thousands of users in more than 70 countries.

http://www.watchmouse.com/

Euro 2008 losers are actually web site winners. (2010-01-13)

France may have left Euro 2008 with its tail between its legs after a humiliating defeat by Italy, but the country still topped the league when it came to having the best sporting web site. For what little consolation that brings.

WatchMouse, a website performance monitoring outfit, carried out its own nailbiting tournament to find the Euro 2008 nation with the best sport website by fashioning an index which takes into account three parameters; errors, speed (load time) and availability.

WatchMouse Monitors 26 Popular APIs So You Don’t Have To (2010-01-20)

Website monitoring startup WatchMouse is launching a new service dubbed API-status.com today, a website that displays realtime availability and performance of popular, public APIs.

The lists of monitored APIs consists of 26 of the most heavily trafficked Web services, including Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, SalesForce, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and others.

WatchMouse Monitors 26 Popular APIs So You Don't Have To (2010-01-23)

Website monitoring startup WatchMouse is launching a new service dubbed API-status.com today, a website that displays realtime availability and performance of popular, public APIs.