Remote Webmaster Website 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.

Italian, German and Spanish versions of site and services available (2005-01-31)

Claudia, Patrick, Pauline, Mark and Niels did a great job last month and finished the Italian, German and Spanish version of the WatchMouse site and services (i-mode, WAP).

Some statistics:
100 million people use German as their native language and another 57 million are native in Italian. Of these people 42M and 24M are Remote webmaster website monitoring respectively.

References: Transparent.com; Global Reach.

If you prefer Spanish, German or Italian to English while using WatchMouse, go to the Subscription tab and select the language of your choice from the 'Language' drop-down box.

Improved organizing of monitoring rules (2005-01-31)

Rules can now be organized into folders in the rule settings page. This is especially useful if you have a large number of rules.

The following features are available for folders:

• Grouping rules into folders: this allows you to group e.g. rules related to the same physical machine, network or organizational unit.
• Switching off alerting for a folder. This overrules the alerting of the rules in the folder.
• Deactivating a folder. This overrules the settings of the rules in the folder.
• Separate access rights to your logs, graphs and reports for other accounts.

Using the access rights, you can setup separate accounts for your customers or co-workers and give them access to relevant parts of your Remote webmaster website monitoring reports.

WatchMouse widget 1.1 released (download widget) (2005-12-17)

WatchMouse releases version 1.1 of their Apple Dashboard site monitoring widget.

NETHERLANDS, 2005-12-16. By means of the WatchMouse widget Apple users get direct insight into the accessibility of their own Internet site. The widget can be downloaded for free from the Apple website.

At regular intervals the dashboard widget checks one or more sites from the users own computer. Also, the Remote webmaster website monitoring of the site during the last 72 hours is registered. A problem is followed by an alert, which is then verified by all WatchMouse control stations.

Features

• Checks your website from your own computer every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes (new in this release).
• Displays the uptime over the last 72 hours.
• Alerts you in case of an error and...
• Verifies errors from all the WatchMouse worldwide monitoring stations

The new version also fixes some minor bugs. The free WatchMouse site monitoring widget can be downloaded from the Apple website , and requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.

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

LB Icon chooses WatchMouse for independent website Remote webmaster website monitoringing (2005-01-31)

Customer websites verified from the visitors' perspective

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

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

WatchMouse opens new Remote webmaster website monitoringing stations in China and London (2005-01-12)

Largest Remote webmaster website monitoringing network world-wide.

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

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

WatchMouse has been Remote webmaster website 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 webmaster website Remote webmaster website monitoringing in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide Remote webmaster website 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 webmaster website 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 webmaster website monitoringed the sites for more than two months. Downtime was said to occur if a site was not Remote webmaster website Remote webmaster website monitoringing 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 webmaster website monitoring their own internet sites using WatchMouse's Remote webmaster website monitoringing service. WatchMouse has been Remote webmaster website 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 webmaster website Remote webmaster website monitoringing in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide Remote webmaster website 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 missed the back-up (2010-01-13)

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

Avi Talwar, Tiscali, UK NOC

We are very content about the WatchMouse services. We have been able to prevent quite a few problems. (2010-01-13)

We are very content about the WatchMouse services. We have been able to prevent quite a few problems. Now that we are informed at an early stage, we can notify our customers, and we can also provide them with objective statistics, which already works to our advantage.
Also, when I receive an SMS/text Remote webmaster website monitoring while I am with a customer, my corporation is immediately perceived as being more reliable.
All in all: thumbs up!

Dave Krapels, Nexwork BV

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 Remote webmaster website monitorings us promptly - every time. This allows us to minimize the impact of Remote webmaster website monitoring and interruptions to our clients. WatchMouse isn't just another monitoring 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.

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

LECTRIC recently needed to improve the website capability and Remote webmaster website monitoring of one of our customers to meet their rRemote webmaster website monitoringdly developing 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

Monitoring our 24/7 Remote webmaster website monitoring service in an independent way is crucial to our business (2010-01-13)

Monitoring our 24/7 Remote webmaster website monitoring service in an independent way is crucial to our business and supports us in delivering on our promise to the customers.

Director, Postbank N.V. (Part of the ING Group)

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 keeping a service such as a website Remote webmaster website monitoring, 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, Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring, 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring shop.

These Remote webmaster website monitoring shops should obviously provide satisfactory performance. Here, both the speed at which they serve pages and their uptime are important. If potential customers cannot reach the Remote webmaster website monitoring shop, or the Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring on a website go to its competitor. A majority of Remote webmaster website monitoring shoppers say performance and uptime influences their choice of Remote webmaster website monitoring shop.

The amount of revenue that is lost when your website or Remote webmaster website monitoring 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% Remote webmaster website monitoring, which corresponds to more than 3 days of Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring shop.

Peter van Eijk

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

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 Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring. 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 Remote webmaster website monitoring of a site.

Regular testing is also essential for the facilitation of good Remote webmaster website monitoring. 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

phpDirectorySource SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities (2009-07-24)

phpDirectorySource is prone to an SQL-injection vulnerability and a cross-site Remote webmaster website monitoringing vulnerability because it fails to sufficiently sanitize user-supplied data.

Exploiting these issues could allow an attacker to steal cookie-based authentication credentials, compromise the application, access or modify data, or exploit latent vulnerabilities in the underlying database.

Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird JavaScript Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities (2009-07-24)

Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are prone to multiple remote memory-corruption vulnerabilities that affect the JavaScript engine.

An attacker can exploit these issues to corrupt memory on the affected computer and run arbitrary code in the context of the user running the affected application. Failed exploit attempts will cause denial-of-service conditions.

These vulnerabilities were previously covered in BID 35758 (Mozilla Firefox MFSA 2009-34, -35, -36, -37, -39, -40 Multiple Vulnerabilities) but have been assigned this record to better document the issues.

RaidenHTTPD Cross Site Scripting and Local File Include Vulnerabilities (2009-07-24)

RaidenHTTPD is prone to local file-include and cross-site Remote webmaster website monitoringing vulnerabilities because the application fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input. These issues affect the WebAdmin component.

An attacker may leverage the cross-site Remote webmaster website monitoringing issue to execute arbitrary Remote webmaster website monitoring code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of the affected site. This may allow the attacker to steal cookie-based authentication credentials and to launch other attacks.

Exploiting the local file-include issue allows remote attackers to view and subsequently execute local files within the context of the webserver process.

RaidenHTTPD 2.0 build 26 and prior versions are affected.

8E6 R3000 Internet Filter Multiple Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerabilities (2007-05-29)

The 8E6 R3000 Internet Filter appliance is prone to multiple cross-site Remote webmaster website monitoringing vulnerabilities because it fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input.

An attacker may leverage these issue to execute arbitrary Remote webmaster website monitoring code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of the affected device. This may help the attacker steal cookie-based authentication credentials and launch other attacks.

Specific information on affected firmware and model number is currently unRemote webmaster website monitoring. This BID will be updated as more information emerges.

Apple Releases a Security Update for QuickTime 7.1.6 to Address Multiple Vulnerabilities (2007-05-29)

Apple has released a Security Update for QuickTime 7.1.6 to address multiple vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime for Java. The impacts of these vulnerabilities include arbitrary code execution and information disclosure.

US-CERT recommends users install the QuickTime 7.1.6 Security Update and follow the Securing Your Web Browser document to disable Java.

US-CERT will continue to investigate these vulnerabilities and provide additional information as it becomes Remote webmaster website monitoring.

Linux-based websites 'perform better' (2010-01-13)

Linux-based websites perform better than those hosted on Windows servers, according to research.

WatchMouse, a Dutch firm that Remote webmaster website monitorings server performance, based its research on a survey of over 1,500 European websites. The company says that, although the websites it surveyed were more frequently based on Microsoft's IIS web server platform running Windows than on Apache running Linux, the latter option performed better in terms of both uptime and load time.

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

Dashboard widget WatchMouse Site Monitor checks 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 checks the behavior and availability of websites. WatchMouse "allows site owners to optimize the internet experience of their customers. A Remote webmaster website monitoring network checks 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 Remote webmaster website monitoringed 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 Remote webmaster website monitoringing 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 1.4.26 API deployed (2008-02-24)

Today, a minor release of the WatchMouse 1.4 API was deployed on http://Remote webmaster website monitoring.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 stations)
  • 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