Network Downtime

New network tools available (2005-01-31)

Network tools like network downtime, traceroute and dig (for DNS), are now available for members as well as non-members. You can use these tools to investigate the behavior of your servers in more detail.
You can find these tools on the 'Tools' page.

i-mode access now available (2005-01-31)

Do you have an iMode mobile handset? Use our new i-mode page on watchmouse.com/imode.
Here you can network downtime the status of your servers, run live test, view recent errors and change rule settings, anywhere, anytime.
Use the account and PIN information listed on the Mobile access page.
If you don't have an i-mode device, try this emulator for a preview.
WAP phones are already supported.

Multiple network downtime addresses & Escalation (2005-01-31)

In the Addresses section of this site you can now manage address groups. This feature can be used for two purposes:

Multiple addresses

When an error condition is detected, multiple recipients of all types (email, icq, sms/text messaging) can be network downtimeed at the same time.

Escalation

Alternatively, network downtimes can be sent to different addresses at different stages; E.g. the first time an error occurs, the event is only logged, the second time, an SMS/text message is sent to the administrator and his assistant and the third time, an e-mail is sent to the support desk.

The number of groups you can define is unlimited.

More worldwide network downtimepoints, now 6 in total (2005-01-31)

As you may have noticed in your logs, we introduced 3 more network downtimepoints last month, now totalling 6 worldwide. The new network downtimepoints are located in France, Germany and Texas. More network downtimepoints will be added as more people from more countries sign up.

The current status of the network downtimepoint network can be found on the 'About' tab.

We also changed the test pattern from Master-Slave (with Amsterdam as master) to a random order. In the next release the test pattern will be user-defined (paid packages only).

Check your websites for certain words or patterns with the 'match' rule. (2005-01-31)

As of today, Gold and Platinum members can network downtime for the presence or absence of a specific piece of text on their web page. This can be done with literal texts or with so called regular expressions (for more complex matches).

To give it a try go to the rule settings and choose type 'match'. The normal 'http' network downtime will be performed as well by this type of rule, so an extra rule is not necessary.

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

Customer websites verified from the visitors' perspective

LB Icon and WatchMouse have signed a contract for the continuous network downtime 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 network downtime 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 network downtimeed for accessibility, speed and conformance from different locations around the world. Because the websites are network downtimeed 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 network downtime 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 network downtimeing 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 network downtime network downtime network at different locations and networks. WatchMouse has thousands of users in more than 70 countries.

http://www.watchmouse.com/

Dutch e-commerce sites poorly prepared for Christmas rush (2004-12-14)

Only 20% achieve maximum availability

UTRECHT, 20041205 -- Many Dutch e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Sinterklaas [traditional Dutch celebration on 5 December] meant that, on average, only one in six sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch network downtime site, following a survey of 25 e-commerce sites. Even worse figures are expected during the weeks before Christmas. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effect on response times.

During the past month, WatchMouse – at its own initiative – closely monitored 25 sites where consumers can shop online, such as Bol.com, Wehkamp, Free Record Shop, De Bijenkorf, ECI, Bart Smit, Dixons and Bruna. The survey shows that the 'up time' – the time during which the server is online – varied from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week a year", says Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse.

The consequences of this are reflected not only in loss of income. Pors: "A website that is not available can cause stacks of work for a helpdesk and, at the end of the day, damage the brand’s image. The problem is that many website owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself: for example, by adding extra server capacity."

WatchMouse has concluded from its survey that only 20% of the sites have achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in online purchases, gigantic sums are involved. In the first six months of 2004, online expenditure rose to € 775 million; a 35% increase. Each online shopper spent € 227 from January through June of this year (Blauw Research, September 2004).

December is also a top month for purchasing on the internet. Pors: "We saw response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Sinterklaas. This does not bode well for the even busier period before Christmas."

WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s network downtime service.

WatchMouse has been network downtime internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies across the globe since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of users in more than 70 countries. WatchMouse services are available in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide network downtime network from a range of locations and networks.

WatchMouse opens new network downtime stations in China and London (2005-01-12)

Largest network downtime network world-wide.

UTRECHT, 20041210 -- WatchMouse, active in network downtime websites world-wide, has opened two new network downtime stations: in Hong Kong and London. At the same time, the company’s station in Sydney, Australia, has been completely renewed. With this expansion, WatchMouse is responding to the explosive growth in interest in real-time site network downtime from e-commerce companies. With nine stations, the Utrecht-based company is now the largest network downtime network world-wide.

Thanks to rapidly increasing online expenditure via the Internet, services such as WatchMouse are undergoing significant development. A network downtime station provides insight into the availability of e-commerce sites, the speed of these sites and response times. Research performed among Dutch websites by WatchMouse has demonstrated that many sites are still missing out in this area. Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse: “As spending online is growing by tens of percentage points each year, it is in the interest of sites to obtain insight into how they are functioning. A server that is poorly accessible for half an hour or more a day loses lots of money. Companies are increasingly recognising that they are losing out, both in terms of turnover and image. Not only in the Netherlands, but also elsewhere. For this reason, we are setting up stations in more countries.”

Local testing

By creating a larger spread among the control stations, sites can be monitored from more points throughout the world. WatchMouse is responding to increasing demand from clients for a world-wide picture of site availability. WatchMouse’s clients can also stipulate a preferred station for 'local' testing. For this reason, China and Great Britain have been added as two strategically important markets for e-commerce. The Utrecht company’s other stations operate from Florida, Texas, Sydney, Nuremberg, Orleans, Amsterdam and Singapore.

WatchMouse

WatchMouse has been network downtime internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies all over the world since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of clients in more than 70 countries. The company’s services are available in seven languages, analyses are performed from a range of locations and networks via the world-wide network downtime network.

This press release in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese

European e-commerce sites poorly prepared for Christmas rush (2004-12-24)

Comparison with US "role models" Amazon and Barnes & Noble

THE NETHERLANDS, 20041223 -- Many European e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Christmas meant that, on average, only one in six web sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch network downtime service provider, following a survey of over 50 European e-commerce sites. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effect on response times.

During the past month, WatchMouse – at its own initiative – closely monitored over 50 web sites where consumers can shop online. The survey shows that the availability varied from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week a year", says Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse.

As a comparison to the US market, two "role models of e-commerce" - amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com - were monitored during the same period. Amazon`s network downtime was similar to that of the average European web shop, whereas Barns & Noble outperformed most e-commerce sites with an uptime of 100%.

The consequences of downtime are reflected not only in loss of income. Pors: "A website that is not available can cause stacks of work for your helpdesk and, at the end of the day, damage your brand. The problem is that many website owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not responding at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself: for example, by adding extra server capacity."

WatchMouse has concluded from its survey that more than 70% of the web sites have not achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in online purchases, gigantic sums are involved: Online sales will increase by 44% to €13 billion ($17 billion) in Western Europe over the holidays period, compared to €10 billion ($13 billion) in the US (Forrester Research, November 2004).

December is a top month for purchasing on the internet. Pors: "We see response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Christmas."

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s network downtime service.

WatchMouse has been network downtime internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies across the globe since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. WatchMouse services are available in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide network downtime network from a range of locations and networks.

WatchMouse publishes first 'Site Availability Index' (2005-06-28)

Only 9 out of 25 funds listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange have sites with good availability

Of the websites of the 25 funds listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange (AEX), only nine display optimal availability. The availability of the other sites, including those of multinationals, ranges from poor to dramatically poor. Unilever has the best result of all websites, with an uptime of 99.995%. The site with the lowest availability is that of Wolters-Kluwer, with an uptime of 94.80%, which represents more than 37 hours of poor network downtime, or even unavailability, per month. This was the conclusion drawn from the first Site Availability Index created by WatchMouse, a company supplying network downtime services for websites and e-commerce applications world-wide.

An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level. This percentage is also often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of AEX funds achieve satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites for more than two months. Downtime was said to occur if a site was not available or did not respond within 8 seconds.

The Site Availability Index for AEX funds (www.watchmouse.com/bereikbaarheidsindex/2005/AEX.html) showed that only nine funds fulfilled the minimum required level of 99.9%. These were Unilever, Philips, AEGON, Numico, Akzo Nobel, ASML Holding, Kon. P&O Nedlloyd, Versatel and Buhrmann. Bringing up the rear were IT company(!) Getronics (96.87%), DSM (96.75%), and Wolters-Kluwer, which with a score of 94.80% is over a day and a half a month ‘off the air’.

The Site Availability Index for AEX funds is an initiative of Emerce and WatchMouse and will be repeated annually.

"Very surprised"

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With many sites, we found an uptime that is worse than that of many smaller companies. And this while AEX funds in particular should attach a great deal of priority to their corporate image. A maximum uptime is part of the 'brand network downtime'. Our theory is that, where there are a lot of people involved within an organisation, there are a lot of hands unplugging cables, so to speak. These companies have complex processes, a great many internal changes are made, and outsourcing of various activities means transparency is often at a premium. This is clearly the case with Getronics, for example. The uptime of the site at the weekend is 100%, but during the week, when people are working, this decreases dramatically."

Pors suspects that the popularity of the sites could also be a reason for poor availability. "Naturally, sites belonging to AEX funds get a lot more traffic than the smaller businesses. On the other hand, this is no excuse; if we look at large online brokers in the US, for example, all achieve an uptime in excess of 99.9%."

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own internet sites using WatchMouse's network downtime service. WatchMouse has been network downtime internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide network downtime network.

In June 2005, WatchMouse was selected by FEM Business as one of the 25 most promising, innovative companies in the Netherlands.

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

WatchMouse understood our requirements and provided cost effective Load Testing (2010-01-13)

LECTRIC recently needed to improve the website capability and performance of one of our customers to meet their rnetwork downtimedly develonetwork downtime requirements. Load Testing was a critical component of this website development activity. These Load Tests were complex, especially as some of the user behaviour metrics were unknown. WatchMouse understood our requirements and provided cost effective Load Testing which added considerable value to our business.

General Manager, LECTRIC Webservices

What do you want to check with a service such as Watchmouse? (2005-01-31)

As I explained in my previous column, you can use a network downtime service in a number of roles. Common to all these roles is the fact that you are keeping alive some services for the benefit of your customers, suppliers, employees or partners. These users are, in the end, all that counts.

What are the objects that you should be checking? Obviously, the least you want to do is check the service that is most visible to these users. This could be the webserver, or a POP or FTP server for example. You would start by setting up a rule to check the server and a URL. The frequency with which you can monitor (that is: the elapsed time between checks) is typically limited by the type of subnetwork network downtimeion that you have. Only in specific cases would you not check as often as your subnetwork network downtimeion allows.

Note that there is a difference between a CONNECT on port 80 rule and a HTTP rule. The first just connects to the port that the webserver is supposed to use. The HTTP rule also checks whether the webserver can produce a valid HTTP response, and whether the document can be found. You probably want the latter check.
Similar reasoning applies to POP and FTP checks. If you set up two different rules on the same host, this allows you to distinguish for example between a broken webserver and a host that is down. If you want even more content oriented checks, have a look at the so-called PLUG-IN rules. Additionally, you can set up checks to make sure that your users are actually using the services that you intend them to. The whole Internet depends heavily on the domain name system(DNS) functioning correctly. If it does not work properly your users may be directed to another site than you intended. This could be a configuration error, but it could also be a defamation hack. In either case, you want to know.
First of all you want to check whether the root servers of the Internet accurately find the DNS that is serving you. This can be checked with a DNSNS rule. What you are checking with this rule is whether the registrar's databases are correct. Second, you want to check if that DNS server (and its slaves) are serving up the proper IP address for the server. For this you can use the DNSA rule, and it will warn you if the DNS server is not working or serves up the wrong address. (Note that the hosting party can change that address at its discretion, as part of a renumbering operation for example.)

Who should you notify of rule failures? Again, different roles have different information requirements. You want to notify the person who can fix things as soon as possible. Mail or SMS/text them directly, you do not want to be in the loop. You might set up an escalation chain, which fires off after a certain amount of errors. Note: make sure that you send the message on a channel that is not affected by the outage: if your e-mail system does not work, delivering a message to that effect should not depend on that e-mail system.
The people in charge of overseeing somebody else's service levels should only get escalation messages, if at all. Rather, they should get the weekly or monthly service reports.

Peter van Eijk is a management consultant specialized in management of network infrastructures. He can be reached via his contact page.

Why do you need a network downtime service such as Watchmouse? (2005-01-31)

There are a number of reasons for this, depending on your role in your organization, and what you want to achieve. Each of these roles leads to a different approach for using and setting up the service.

Most likely you are either responsible for keeping a service such as a website network network downtime, or you have contracted somebody else to do that for you. Additionally, you could be a consultant or technical architect who wants to get an insight in network network downtime and uptime characteristics of various solutions and services.

If your role is to keep things running, you really want to be notified of problems as soon as possible, before your customers or supervisors notice. You want appropriate error messages and not too many false alarms. As you configure Watchmouse you probably want to have a quick alert by e-mail or SMS/text message when things don't work and have additional diagnostic information available. In this way, network downtime can be kept to a minimum. It is not only the quality of the systems that counts, but also the speed with which you can fix problems.

Your role could also be in overseeing your service providers, whether they are internal or outsourced. In that case, you don't want to be interrupted by these messages, unless the situation becomes dramatic. Instead you would like to look at the weekly report, and see if your service providers are living up to their promises. On the Internet it is easy to get 99% uptime, and you should really be doing better than that. The services that regularly fail to make this grade need attention, to see if another approach to provisioning them works better.

If you are considering technical alternatives for the way you are setting up your e-business, you are most likely interested in typical failure modes. For example, we know from experience that most website problems are software problems, followed by sizing problems. Communications problems are fairly rare, and if they occur they take the form of peering problems: websites cannot be reached from specific networks, even if all networks are operational. One approach using Watchmouse reports is to check various aspects with different rules. Use one rule to download the homepage, another to check the DNS and a third to check connectivity to the hosting centre. In a next column I'll go into the details of this.

Peter van Eijk is a management consultant specialized in management of network infrastructures. He can be reached via his contact page.

Online shops, speed and network downtime, getting the facts. (2009-12-07)

These days your website plays an important role in informing potential customers, converting them into customers who want to do business with you, and possibly also conducting the transactions with these customers. In other words: Your business relies ever more on the digital economy, and increasingly on the transactional part of it, the network network downtime shop.

These network network downtime shops should obviously provide satisfactory network network downtime. Here, both the speed at which they serve pages and their uptime are important. If potential customers cannot reach the network network downtime shop, or the network network downtime shop is too slow, they are less likely to do business with you now, and in the future. Studies have revealed that half of the people who experience network downtime on a website go to its competitor. A majority of network network downtime shoppers say network network downtime and uptime influences their choice of network network downtime shop.

The amount of revenue that is lost when your website or network network downtime shop does not behave properly is hard to quantify. If your website is slow your customers may select a distribution channel that is more costly for you, or they may go to your competitor. Even worse, they may complain about your company to other potential customers. All of this boils down to lost revenue.

A good website is up for at least 99.9% of the time, even though this still represents more than 8 hours in a full year. In a recent survey we found that many websites do not even achieve 99% availability, which corresponds to more than 3 days of network downtime a year. As regards speed, if a web page does not load in less than 4 seconds, people start to leave the site, sometimes forever.

How do you make your network network downtime shop an efficient experience for your customers? The site must be designed with a strong focus on the customer task. The technology must be no more complex than is relevant. People get annoyed by slow loading Flash intros and complex and slow Flash-based navigation. Take a look at the Google home page; it is one of the fastest websites in the world. On the other hand, you can still use a video clip of a product, if that is relevant to the customer at a particular point in the transaction. You can also use advanced Web 2.0 technology if it makes the user interface more resilient and user-friendly. To experience this, look at Google maps using a dial-up internet connection. It is a really complex user interface, but everything possible has been done to create a positive user experience.

Technology is also important; make sure that you have good service level agreements with all your technology providers. You also want to stress test the site, to see what happens if a lot of people start using it simultaneously. Finally, you should independently monitor the site. When it is time to talk to your hosting company, IT department or website maintainer, it is very helpful to have hard data that reports on the speed and uptime of your network network downtime shop.

Peter van Eijk

dr Peter van Eijk is an independent management consultant associated with WatchMouse, the site network downtime experts www.watchmouse.com. He is experienced in setup, management and audits of digital infrastructures. His blog is "Peter's Griddle".

Website network network downtime 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 network network downtime 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 network network downtime. 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 network network downtime 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 network network downtime 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 network network downtime network downtime and stress test services

Ignite Realtime Openfire Unspecified Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (2007-05-29)

Openfire is prone to an unspecified privilege-network downtime vulnerability.

An attacker can exploit this issue to obtain escalated privileges. A successful attack can result in a compromise in the context of the affected application.

Openfire 3.3.0 and prior are vulnerable to this issue.

Cyrus IMAPD Multiple Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (2006-12-15)

Cyrus IMAPD is reported susceptible to multiple remote vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include multiple buffer-overflow issues that may allow remote attackers to execute machine code in the context of the server process. This may lead to unauthorized access or privilege network downtime.

The following specific issues were identified:

- Multiple one-byte buffer-overflow vulnerabilities affecting the IMAP annotate network downtime (the mailbox handling code) and the routines that handle cached headers.

- Multiple stack-based overflow vulnerabilities affecting fetchnews, backend, and imapd.

Cyrus IMAPD 2.0.11 and prior versions are affected by these issues.

Due to a lack of details, further information is not available at the moment. This BID will be updated when more information becomes available.

Bogofilter Multiple Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (2006-12-21)

Multiple remote buffer-overflow vulnerabilities affect Bogofilter. These issues are due to the application's failure to properly handle invalid input sequences and to validate the length of user-supplied strings before copying them into static process buffers.

An attacker may exploit these issue to cause a denial-of-service condition or possibly to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable application. This may facilitate unauthorized access or privilege network downtime.

Note that successful exploitation requires that Bogofilter be used with a Unicode database.

Typo3 Class.TX_RTEHTMLArea_PI1.PHP Multiple Remote Command Execution Vulnerabilities (2006-12-20)

TYPO3 is prone to multiple vulnerabilities that permit the execution of arbitrary commands. This issue occurs because the application fails to properly sanitize user-supplied data.

Exploiting these issues allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary system commands with the privileges of the application.

Versions 4.0 to 4.0.3 and 4.1beta are vulnerable; versions 3.7 and 3.8 are also vulnerable if they have the optional 'rtehtmlarea' network downtime installed.

Heimdal RSHD Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (2006-12-20)

Heimdal 'rshd' is prone to a local privilege-network downtime vulnerability.

A local attacker can gain ownership of a file by overwriting its credential cache. This may lead to various attacks, including privilege network downtime.

Heimdal versions prior to 0.7.2 and 0.6.6 are vulnerable.

Monitor your website with WatchMouse (2010-01-13)

Dashboard widget WatchMouse Site Monitor network downtimes up on the website of your choice every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes to keep track of its uptime. But wait, there's more...

4 New APIs: Wine, Whois and Website Monitoring (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse API: The WatchMouse service network downtimes the behavior and availability of websites. WatchMouse "allows site owners to optimize the internet experience of their customers. A worldwide network network downtimes websites from 40 different locations in 25 countries around the globe."

Facebook: Slow And Unresponsive? (2010-01-13)

Contrary to a recent study that showed that Facebook is among the most reliable social networks, new study conducted by WatchMouse shows abysmal results for Facebook. 104 sites were monitored by WatchMouse, and Facebook was by far the worst performance-wise: it had slow loading times and frequent errors. Check out the graph (too big to show here) to see how bad it looks.

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 network downtime 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.

Facebook tops one list of 'slow and inaccessible' social networks (2010-01-13)

On Thursday, Web site-network downtime firm WatchMouse released the results of a study about the performance of 104 social-media sites--social networks, blogging communities, bookmarking sites, and the like--and boldly deemed them to be overall "slow and inaccessible."

Test phase Frankfurt checkpoint (2005-03-29)

As you may have noticed in your logs, we are slowly introducing a new monitoring network downtime in Frankfurt, Germany. Not all protocols are serviced at this checkpoint yet..., and we use in about 5% of the checks.

Keep an I on this blog, and on the official news section of our site for the formal announcement!

Ping from all our monitoring network downtimes (2005-12-09)

You can now use our improved ping tool to ping your server from each of our monitoring network downtimes.

In case ping requests are blocked by your firewall or server, you can use the host check tool alternatively.

WatchMouse 1.4.26 API deployed (2008-02-24)

Today, a minor release of the WatchMouse 1.4 API was deployed on http://network downtime.watchmouse.com/1.4/. The current version is now 1.4.26. The changes are backward compatible with the previous version.

Changes w.r.t. 1.4.25

• self-documenting calls, add ?doc after the call, no other parameters and the parameter specification is shown (try and click the URL above!)
• new parameter 'acct' (account) on all rule, contact, and folder calls so
  1. resellers and other accounts with sub accounts can login with their own credentials and then access the sub-account
  2. accounts with read access rights to other accounts can access these accounts (graphs, logs)
• alternative output formats for logs (Excell, tab delimited, CSV, streaming)
• new calls added:
  • info_cps - get information on checkpoints (monitoring network downtimes)
  • info_ip - get information about a given host (or about caller)
  • info_country (beta) - get information about a given country
  • info_currency (beta) - get information about a given currency
  • fldr_add/mod/get/del - manipulate rule folders
  • rule_check - check a rule now
  • ch_add/mod/get/del - manipulate contacts
  • acct_new/add - calls to create additional accounts
• version in XML output (first enclosing tag)
• no IP check on acct_whois call (used for auto login on WatchMouse site)
• use API password instead of account password if present (not supported on the WatchMouse site yet)
• full support for tags in rule_add/mod/get/del and rule_graph now
• support PNGs as error message for rule_graph so developper can always show a picture
• use ip geo information if applicable