Remote Server Monitoring

New network tools available (2005-01-31)

Network tools like ping, 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.

DNS checks available (2005-01-31)

Simple DNS verification was added to some of the packages. See our overview for details.
More DNS services will be added in the near future.

Display your remote server monitoring on your homepage (2005-01-31)

We added a small banner to the banner page at this website which shows the remote server monitoring of your website for the last seven days. It is recreated every day so it will show the up to date statistics.

Just copy the HTML code to the right of the banner of your choice, paste it in your home page, and it will show the most current statistics for your website(s).

First checkpoint in China (2005-01-31)

In just weeks after our UK checkpoint went live, the WatchMouse network of monitoring remote server monitorings has been extended again, this time with a monitoring remote server monitoring at the datacenter of ONE-iAdvantage in Hong Kong, China, bringing the total number of checkpoints to 9.
The current network consists of checkpoints in:

• Florida, USA
• Texas, USA
• London, United Kingdom
• Sydney, Australia
• Nürnberg, Germany
• Orléans, France
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2 remote server monitorings)
• Singapore
• Hong Kong, China

The new checkpoint will appear automatically in your logs. You can also set the new checkpoint as the primary checkpoint in your monitoring settings.

The current status of the WatchMouse monitoring network can be found on the 'About' tab of the WatchMouse site.

New checkpoint: London UK (2005-01-31)

The WatchMouse network of monitoring remote server monitorings has been extended once more, this time with a checkpoint at the well-connected datacenter of Rackspace in London, UK, bringing the total number of checkpoints to 8. Currently the network includes:

• Florida, USA
• Texas, USA
• London, United Kingdom
• Nürnberg, Germany
• Orléans, France
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Singapore
• Sydney, Australia

Checkpoints in China and Brazil will follow in the next months.

The new checkpoint will appear automatically in your logs. You can also set the new checkpoint as the primary checkpoint in your monitoring settings.

The current status of the WatchMouse monitoring network can be found on the 'About' tab of the WatchMouse site.

LB Icon chooses WatchMouse for independent website remote server monitoringing (2005-01-31)

Customer websites verified from the visitors' perspective

LB Icon and WatchMouse have signed a contract for the continuous remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringal 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 remote server monitoring. 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring in 8 languages and analysis is performed through its worldwide remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringed 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s remote server monitoringing service.

WatchMouse has been remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide remote server monitoringing network from a range of locations and networks.

WatchMouse opens new remote server monitoringing stations in China and London (2005-01-12)

Largest remote server monitoringing network world-wide.

UTRECHT, 20041210 -- WatchMouse, active in remote server monitoringing websites world-wide, has opened two new remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringing from e-commerce companies. With nine stations, the Utrecht-based company is now the largest remote server monitoringing network world-wide.

Thanks to rapidly increasing online expenditure via the Internet, services such as WatchMouse are undergoing significant development. A remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringed 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 remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring in seven languages, analyses are performed from a range of locations and networks via the world-wide remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringed 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoringed during the same period. Amazon`s performance 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s remote server monitoringing service.

WatchMouse has been remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide remote server monitoringing 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 performance, or even unavailability, per month. This was the conclusion drawn from the first Site Availability Index created by WatchMouse, a company supplying remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoringed the sites for more than two months. Downtime was said to occur if a site was not remote server monitoring 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 performance'. 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 remote server monitoring their own internet sites using WatchMouse's remote server monitoringing service. WatchMouse has been remote server monitoringing 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 remote server monitoring in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide remote server monitoringing 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.

I'm sending you this e-mail just to say how very impressed I am with your site and services. (2010-01-13)

I'm sending you this e-mail just to say how very impressed I am with your site and services. I found your site on Google and spent a long time comparing you to the other site remote server monitoringing services that are out there. Your site definitely was the most appealing of them all and consequently I signed up for the silver package today.

Simon Bland, ProWeb Design

I missed the back-up (2010-01-13)

Good to be back, we have all sorts of remote server monitoringing in place here but I still missed the back-up of knowing that your service will alert my mobile if something goes wrong.

Avi Talwar, Tiscali, UK NOC

At OneStat we use the WatchMouse Platinum package, and I can recommend it to every serious webmaster. (2010-01-13)

At OneStat we use the WatchMouse Platinum package, and I can recommend it to every serious webmaster.

Niels Brinkman, OneStat.com

We guarantee our customers 100% uptime. (2010-01-13)

We guarantee our customers 100% uptime. To fulfill this guarantee, we use several remote server monitoringing systems.
Based on our experiences we can say: WatchMouse is REALLY reliable!

Gerwin Scheeve, Lost Boys

Very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care (2010-01-13)

With many hundreds of business clients who expect and deserve over 99.99% uptime, in the instances where we do have service issues, WatchMouse alerts us promptly - every time. This allows us to minimize the impact of downtime and interruptions to our clients. WatchMouse isn't just another remote server monitoringing service, the team is dedicated to building on an already very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care

Michael Bloch, Business Operations Manager, ThinkHost, Inc.

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

As I explained in my previous column, you can use a monitoring service in a number of roles. Common to all these roles is the fact that you are keeremote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoringing? Obviously, the least you want to do is remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring the server and a URL. The frequency with which you can monitor (that is: the elapsed time between remote server monitorings) is typically limited by the type of subremote server monitoringion that you have. Only in specific cases would you not remote server monitoring as often as your subremote server monitoringion 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 remote server monitorings whether the webserver can produce a valid HTTP response, and whether the document can be found. You probably want the latter remote server monitoring.
Similar reasoning applies to POP and FTP remote server monitorings. 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 remote server monitorings, have a look at the so-called PLUG-IN rules. Additionally, you can set up remote server monitorings 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 remote server monitoring whether the root servers of the Internet accurately find the DNS that is serving you. This can be remote server monitoringed with a DNSNS rule. What you are remote server monitoringing with this rule is whether the registrar's databases are correct. Second, you want to remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoring 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 monitoring 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 keeremote server monitoring a service such as a website online, 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 performance 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, 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 remote server monitoring various aspects with different rules. Use one rule to download the homepage, another to remote server monitoring the DNS and a third to remote server monitoring 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.

Independant, external testing (2005-10-15)

I started to work at Q-go in 2000. Q-go provides companies with self service pages on the Internet. Their customers ask a question in their own language and wording, and immediately get a very relevant answer. The power of the Q-go solution is its natural language technology, which enables it to understand the questions. The Q-go solution is offered as a hosted (ASP) solution, which of course has to work 24 x 7, a new area for me at that time.

At my previous jobs, at universities and research institutes, this was different. We worked from eight to six. If a demo application didn't work, the users just called, and we fixed the problem. And at six, we stopped and went home. All customers and other relations went home too. A nightly malfunction in the server was no problem, as there was no customer there to notice the problem.

At Q-go, this is completely different. A service should be available all the time. Day and night. Initially there were no tools to test whether our service was available or not. The only way to test it was to use the application itself. And so I did. During the day, but also at night, I remote server monitoringed whether the application was up. Our customers use the Q-go application continuously, and notice immediately when the application fails. Customers would call me in those cases, and it's not very pleasant to hear from your customers about an issue with your service.

So we developed some solutions ourselves to hear before our customers when something was wrong. And to be able to react to problems quickly. But customers kept calling!

How was that possible? Closer investigations revealed that the test system used the same resources (computers, networks, name servers) as the system under test... The test were not performed properly in case of problems. The text-alerts (SMS) did not reach us either. The cause was identical: we used the same hardware, the same network, and the same power (!) as the systems we tested.

My lessons learned:

• Keep the systems that test completely separated from the systems you test.
• Test your services (web servers, mail servers, ...) from the point-of-view of its users: the customer on the Internet.
• Don't forget regular maintenance of your test systems (software and hardware) after the installation!

For me, I'm outsourcing external testing!

Bart Bos, Director, Q-go.com

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, keeremote server monitoring 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 remote server monitoringing 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

Flu Jab Your Website Against The Pandemic: 6,000 Infected Webpages Per Day! (2008-02-18)

The respected IT news website, The Register reports that every 14 seconds a web page is infected, which amounts to 6,000 infected web pages per day. Four out of five of these infections come from innocent companies and individuals who are oblivious to their site being hacked and subsequently used for hosting the malware of virus writers. The Register further reports that in the past viruses were spread using infected e-mail. Nowadays, however, the favoured virus distribution methods are downloads from compromised sites. As a result of these booby-trapped sites malware is present on at least one in every ten web pages.

WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning offers your website the flu jab against this virus pandemic. WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning is an affordable way to routinely remote server monitoring you company's security exposure and eliminate the risks of manual audits. Utilizing the most up-to-date database of known vulnerabilities, WatchMouse identifies any security risks and provides you with peace of mind that your software applications are being scanned from the perspective of a hacker, external to your organization.
To ensure your website and servers are remote server monitoringed for the latest issues WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning performs over 20,000 remote server monitorings for known vulnerability and security exposures; using a database which is updated daily by multiple accredited organizations including CVE (funded by the US government) and Bugtraq. Following the detection of any severe issues, automated, real-time email, SMS and pager alerts give your business the chance to react quickly. Scans can be scheduled during low usage or maintenance hours and set at an intensity and frequency suited to your business needs and budget.

To obtain a free Periodic Vulnerability Scanning trial visit: www.watchmouse.com/vulnerability_scan_trial.php

The Register's article was published on 23.01.08 can be viewed at: www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/23/booby_trapped_web_botnet_menace/

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

Openfire is prone to an unspecified privilege-escalation vulnerability.

An attacker can exploit this issue to obtain remote server monitoringd 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.

OpenSSH LoginGraceTime Remote Denial Of Service Vulnerability (2006-12-16)

OpenSSH is susceptible to a remote denial-of-service vulnerability. This issue is due to a design flaw when servicing timeouts related to the 'LoginGraceTime' server-configuration directive.

Specifically, when 'LoginGraceTime' in conjunction with 'MaxStartups' and 'UsePrivilegeSeparation' are configured and enabled in the server, a condition may arise where the server refuses further remote remote server monitoringion attempts.

This issue may be exploited by remote attackers to deny SSH service to legitimate users.

Ethereal IRC Protocol Dissector Denial of Service Vulnerability (2006-12-21)

The Ethereal IRC remote server monitoring dissector is prone to a remotely exploitable denial-of-service vulnerability.

An attacker may exploit this issue by causing Ethereal to process a malformed packet. Successful exploitation will cause a denial-of-service condition in the Ethereal application.

Further details are not currently available. This BID will be updated as more information is disclosed.

Mozilla Firefox/SeaMonkey/Thunderbird Multiple Remote Vulnerabilities (2006-12-20)

The Mozilla Foundation has released nine security advisories specifying vulnerabilities in Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird.

These vulnerabilities allow attackers to:

- execute arbitrary code
- perform cross-site scripting attacks
- inject arbitrary content
- gain remote server monitoringd privileges
- crash affected applications and potentially execute arbitrary code.

Other attacks may also be possible.

XFree86 Pixmap Allocation Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (2006-12-18)

XFree86 is prone to a buffer overrun in its pixmap-processing code.

This issue can potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and to remote server monitoring privileges. An attacker may possibly gain superuser privileges by exploiting this issue.

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 remote server 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.

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

On Thursday, Web site-remote server monitoring 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: Google DNS is snel maar onbetrouwbaar (2010-01-14)

Vorige week verbaasde Google vriend en vijand door een eigen DNS-cache te presenteren. Hoe doet Google Public DNS het vergeleken met de rest?

De Utrechtse website remote server monitoring dienst WatchMouse nam de proef op de som en vergeleek vier publieke DNS-diensten: DNSAdvantage, DNSResolvers, Google Public DNS en OpenDNS. Iedere dienst kreeg verspreid over zes dagen 18.000 queries voor de kiezen vanuit 42 locaties over de hele wereld.

WatchMouse and Badboy Software Announce Partnership (2010-01-14)

WatchMouse is pleased to announce a partnership with Australia's Badboy Software. The partnership combines the immensely popular Badboy scripting tool with WatchMouse's market leading website performance remote server monitoring, enabling customers to record complex transaction scripts and run them using a global infrastructure.