News
New Service: Monitoring the epicenter (DNS) of your online brands (2008-01-24)
Your domain name directs customers to a website where you represent your brand and all that it stands for but are you managing and regularly monitoring the domain name service (DNS) which translates your domain name and brings your customers to you? DNS consistency monitoring can help ensure your business does not lose customers to a slow or faulty DNS.
It is useless to have paid for an expensive and fully redundant web site server (park), if the DNS servers fail to respond, respond incorrectly, or inconsistently. Your DNS must be consistent and correct. Monitoring for DNS consistency is particularly important if you have online services relying on one or more domain names (and that is almost always the case). It doesn't matter if your DNS servers are maintained in-house or outsourced, you need to know if they are doing what they are supposed to do.
WatchMouse's DNS consistency monitoring (now available in closed beta) checks your DNS systems and provides rapid notification of any unexpected DNS behaviour.
The WatchMouse's 'domain' type rule allows you to monitor the consistency of the behaviour of your DNS servers. It queries for a specified domain, performs a number of checks to test the health of your DNS servers and monitors for any difference in behaviour of your name servers. (If you also need to check that a domain name resolves to the correct IP address(es), you can use the 'dns' type rule which will be offered as part of the WatchMouse DNS consistency monitoring).
This new service will be available to all WatchMouse customers with a performance monitoring subscription (Webmaster and higher) and can be configured on the Monitoring Settings page. To set-up DNS consistency monitoring, simply enter the domain name (advanced settings are available).
Fancy participating in our closed beta test?
- Contact us to request participation in the beta.
- Collect all the domain names that are important to your business.
- Go to the Monitoring Settings page.
- Add a 'new rule' and select 'domain' from the type menu, for each of the domains you wish to monitor.
- Specify the other settings you would like for other rule types, hit 'save', and you're done!
- The results of the domain name monitoring appear in your logs, reports, and graphs instantly.
Press releases
Linux-based website beats Windows-based sites (2007-06-24)
WatchMouse research shows Linux/Apache has less downtime and yields faster websites than Microsoft/IIS
London, June 20, 2007 – Linux websites have better uptime and load faster than Windows-based websites. Research by WatchMouse, a website monitoring company, also shows that web server platform Apache outperforms the Microsoft IIS platform. Therefore, having a Linux website and an Apache webserver platform offers the best choice for professional web pages.
WatchMouse researched the performance of over 1500 websites across different economic sectors in Europe. Most websites in this study are based on either Linux or Windows. Linux offers the best uptime. When looking at web server platforms the overall opinion favours Microsoft IIS and Apache although the latter outperforms the former in this area as well. The research finds that apart from operating system and web server platform, uptime also depends on the country where the server is based.
On average, Windows and Linux are running more than three quarters of all websites. However, there are differences between countries. Poland and Germany favour Linux combined with Apache for their websites while the professional sites in the UK and Sweden rely heavily on Windows/ Microsoft IIS. When looking at the relative performance of the different web server platforms, Linux clearly beats Windows.
One in four of the monitored professional websites have an uptime of 99.9% which suffices for customer satisfaction. Two thirds of the websites have an availability of less than 99.9% which accounts for at least 8 hours downtime per year. According to WatchMouse this is not acceptable.
“Even though the companies in our study seem to prefer Windows over Linux, our research shows they would be better off using Linux/Apache based websites. Research has shown that most web users are very impatient and will wait no longer than four seconds for a webpage to load”, says Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse. “Companies need to realise that website uptime is crucial for a healthy customer satisfaction and a solid client base. Organisations need to become more aware of the impact the choice of web server platform can have on their overall availability and performance.”
A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing all the sites monitored, can be found on
http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/
Social networking sites slow and inaccessible (2008-01-10)
WatchMouse research shows Facebook performance poorest of all
The Netherlands, January 10, 2008 – Popular social networking sites fail to deliver to their users, according to WatchMouse. Research from the leading website monitoring company has shown that web 2.0 sites often are slow to open or fail to load properly. WatchMouse monitored the time it took the social networking sites, listed on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites), to load. The results showed that the worst for availability is the immensely popular Facebook.
Other well known culprits include Twitter, last.fm, Windows Live Spaces, Friendster and del.icio.us. Of the 104 sites monitored, 51 show a Site Performance Index (SPI) of 1000 or more, making them very slow in load time. A remarkable outcome, seeing as most sites heavily use Ajax, which should lead to quicker load times since the dynamics of the site do not load immediately. Using Ajax should help websites increase interactivity, speed, functionality and usability by exchanging small amounts of data with the server so the entire webpage does not need loading fully every time someone performs an action on a page.
Of the monitored social networking sites, Faceparty performed the best - with an SPI of 303 - meaning users can access the site most frequently and in the fastest time. Looking at the results, most sites still have a lot to work on if they want their users to keep returning to their site. Research has shown that most web users are very impatient and will wait no longer than four seconds for a webpage to load.
“It is interesting to see that popular networking sites turn out to have very bad performance,” said Mark Pors, CTO at Watchmouse. “It is surprising they still have such a big fan base when they serve their users so badly. Using Ajax technology, they should be able to work more effectively. For now the sites will need to do a lot of work to remain popular and improve their performance.”
A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing all the sites monitored, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_social_networking_sites.php
Even website hosting companies have too little uptime (2007-02-05)
Leaseweb, Rackspace and WideXS score well
Utrecht, 5 February 2007 – Research carried out by WatchMouse, the Dutch site and server monitoring company, has revealed that many website hosting companies are not achieving optimum performance in terms of uptime. During the months November and December 2006, the company registered the average loading times and availability of the sites of eleven website hosting companies. Leaseweb, Rackspace and WideXS came out on top.
The three best-performing companies all had an average uptime of 99.99% or higher. A good score, says WatchMouse, although the company pointed out that, even when achieving this score, a site will still be unavailable for eight hours every year. The reasons for this downtime vary between sites, although problems with the name server (DNS) and excessive loading times dominate. The types of problem also differ from site to site, indicating that good choices – for example for DNS solutions – are essential.
Companies which scored 99.7% or less are at risk of losing clients annually owing to their site loading too slowly, or unavailability of the web page. Four of the eleven hosting companies scored below this limit and will therefore have to work on their availability. Nevertheless, the organisations tested generally performed better than the average bank website, for example.
"On the one hand, it is reassuring to see that website hosting companies recognise the importance of good availability. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement, particularly as it is precisely these companies that should be setting the pace", says Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse. "Customers looking for a web hosting company will not want to entrust the management of their site to a hosting company whose own site is unreliable. Optimum performance is therefore crucial, for these companies in particular."
The full results of the survey can be obtained from the WatchMouse site: www.watchmouse.com
Columns
Website performance is the key to customer satisfaction (2007-06-27)
How often have you typed in the Google URL and received a page that will not load? I am willing to bet that this is a rare occurrence. Despite its busy traffic, Google is a textbook example of a web site that has almost perfect performance and therefore serves a great number of satisfied customers. The market share of the search engine is a resounding confirmation of this. You are assisted quickly, so you come back sooner. Research conducted by JupiterResearch has revealed that visitors to a site only have 4 seconds of patience. If the site has not been loaded by that time, they leave. Error messages also prompt potential customers to go to the competition.
Why do organisations still devote so little attention to the effective availability of their site? Performance is the key to satisfied customers. For many companies, their web site is the face of the organisation. Consumers and also business users of the Internet use the wealth of information on the web to compare purchasing options. It is of immeasurable importance that they are also actually able to find what they are looking for. If this is not possible at one company, competitors are straining at the leash to offer their services through a correctly functioning site.
Coming back to the praise that we had for Google, we see that the search engine has made significant investments in the availability of its web site. The page is run by several machines at various sites. If one crashes there are enough back-up servers that can take over the traffic flows to guarantee optimum performance. In addition, the search machine invests a great deal of time and money in the right hardware and people. Although the site has a difficult task – searching through an index of billions of documents – it is almost always available and loads fast.
The actual site is unspectacular in construction. This applies to the majority of sites with a high level of availability. Simple sites such as the news site NU.nl are almost always easy to access. Nevertheless, it is not only the layout of the site that determines how the web page performs. Too many photos, long symbols and frills make web sites slower to respond. The fact that the ‘back end’ of the site is not efficiently programmed also contributes to longer loading times. Frequent consultation of background databases is also detrimental to the speed of the page.
Where it often goes wrong is when different people are working on a site, thereby disturbing the links between the various elements. The different parts of the site will work correctly, but the site as a whole will fail to perform. This means long waiting times for people who want to use the services of a company.
Service providers at the upper end of the market are becoming increasingly aware of this. The contracts that they use frequently include a service level agreement (SLA) for the part for which they are responsible. Nevertheless, they regularly make mistakes due to the fact that the promised performance is not subsequently verified (by an independent party). Although it is now essentially part of the contract, there is insufficient actual verification. Ideally, web site performance should become a permanent component of a contract. In addition, clear internal agreements must be made on who has final responsibility for the efficient loading and availability of a site.
Regular testing is also essential for the facilitation of good availability. This will prevent a great deal of errors, keeping the site up and running at crucial times. The storm that blew over the Netherlands at the end of January was a good opportunity to see which sites were prepared for extreme loads and which were not. The site of the Dutch weather institute, KNMI, was almost unreachable, while some logical thought could have protected them from this eventuality. If you know that a major storm is heading towards the country you can be sure that people will search for information on the weather and roads on the Internet. Sites such as those of KLM and Schiphol were also unreachable, while the specially created site Crisis.nl, which had been kept as simple as possible, was able to serve a large number of people.
Including ‘stress tests’ in a SLA or conducting them regularly in-house is therefore to be recommended. Companies can easily take control by ensuring that their service provider executes this type of test or by putting their own site under pressure. This is the best method of checking whether your web site can handle a sudden increase in visitor numbers. It is also good to know whether the servers on which your site is running actually ensure that your page is always available and loads correctly. For companies, it is crucial to see when they are off air. This can save them a large amount of money every year and will also reduce the number of irritated visitors to the site. This is how you keep customers satisfied and keep the company running.
Mark Pors
Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse
WatchMouse provides site performance monitoring and stress test services
Security news
Microsoft Remote Procedure Call Service DoS Vulnerability (2009-07-12)
There is an inconsistency between the interface definitions in certain RPC server stubs and the remote server's input validation code.
If certain input is validated by the interface definition, there is a chance that the target server will not properly validate the input. Thus, possibly impacting the server's performance and other applications running on the affected host.
The RPC servers associated with system services in Exchange, SQL, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 are subject to this issue.
In the press
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 monitors 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.
