News
New functionality: Site Performance Index graph (2007-08-17)
A new graph type has been added to the monitoring graphs: Site Performance Index.
The new graph is available for all WatchMouse users as of now, and can be found on the graphs page. Select "Site Performance Index" from the first drop-down menu (Display).
This graph shows the WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) for the selected rule(s).
Note: Only rules of the type http and https are included in this graph.
The SPI graph enables you to compare the performance of your web servers. In order to make a fair comparison, the time-out for all rules should be the same.
The WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) contains information on both the availability (or uptime) and the speed of a website. That makes the SPI an accurate representation of the average "waiting time" for a visitor: the higher the SPI, the longer visitors have to wait, on average, for the site to load. A low SPI is good, i.e. the shortest bar in this graph represents the site with the fastest response time and shortest waiting time.
The SPI values in the graph indicate only a relative SPI of your own web sites. If you want to compare your sites to those of your competitors use the WatchMouse SPI performance benchmarking.
Press releases
Dutch e-commerce sites poorly prepared for Christmas rush (2004-12-14)
Only 20% achieve maximum availability
UTRECHT, 20041205 -- Many Dutch e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Sinterklaas [traditional Dutch celebration on 5 December] meant that, on average, only one in six sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch monitoring site, following a survey of 25 e-commerce sites. Even worse figures are expected during the weeks before Christmas. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effect on response times.
During the past month, WatchMouse – at its own initiative – closely monitored 25 sites where consumers can shop online, such as Bol.com, Wehkamp, Free Record Shop, De Bijenkorf, ECI, Bart Smit, Dixons and Bruna. The survey shows that the 'up time' – the time during which the server is online – varied from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week a year", says Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse.
The consequences of this are reflected not only in loss of income. Pors: "A website that is not available can cause stacks of work for a helpdesk and, at the end of the day, damage the brand’s image. The problem is that many website owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself: for example, by adding extra server capacity."
WatchMouse has concluded from its survey that only 20% of the sites have achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in online purchases, gigantic sums are involved. In the first six months of 2004, online expenditure rose to € 775 million; a 35% increase. Each online shopper spent € 227 from January through June of this year (Blauw Research, September 2004).
December is also a top month for purchasing on the internet. Pors: "We saw response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Sinterklaas. This does not bode well for the even busier period before Christmas."
WatchMouse
Companies can easily monitor their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s monitoring service.
WatchMouse has been monitoring internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies across the globe since 2001.
WatchMouse has thousands of users in more than 70 countries. WatchMouse services are available in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide monitoring network from a range of locations and networks.
European e-commerce sites poorly prepared for Christmas rush (2004-12-24)
Comparison with US "role models" Amazon and Barnes & Noble
THE NETHERLANDS, 20041223 -- Many European e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Christmas meant that, on average, only one in six web sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch monitoring service provider, following a survey of over 50 European e-commerce sites. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effect on response times.
During the past month, WatchMouse – at its own initiative – closely monitored over 50 web sites where consumers can shop online. The survey shows that the availability varied from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week a year", says Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse.
As a comparison to the US market, two "role models of e-commerce" - amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com - were monitored during the same period. Amazon`s 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 available can cause stacks of work for your helpdesk and, at the end of the day, damage your brand. The problem is that many website owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not responding at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself: for example, by adding extra server capacity."
WatchMouse has concluded from its survey that more than 70% of the web sites have not achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in online purchases, gigantic sums are involved: Online sales will increase by 44% to €13 billion ($17 billion) in Western Europe over the holidays period, compared to €10 billion ($13 billion) in the US (Forrester Research, November 2004).
December is a top month for purchasing on the internet. Pors: "We see response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Christmas."
About WatchMouse
Companies can easily monitor their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s monitoring service.
WatchMouse has been monitoring internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies across the globe since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. WatchMouse services are available in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide monitoring network from a range of locations and networks.
WatchMouse opens new monitoring stations in China and London (2005-01-12)
Largest monitoring network world-wide.
UTRECHT, 20041210 -- WatchMouse, active in monitoring websites world-wide, has opened two new monitoring 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 monitoring from e-commerce companies. With nine stations, the Utrecht-based company is now the largest monitoring network world-wide.
Thanks to rapidly increasing online expenditure via the Internet, services such as WatchMouse are undergoing significant development. A monitoring station provides insight into the availability of e-commerce sites, the speed of these sites and response times. Research performed among Dutch websites by WatchMouse has demonstrated that many sites are still missing out in this area. Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse: “As spending online is growing by tens of percentage points each year, it is in the interest of sites to obtain insight into how they are functioning. A server that is poorly accessible for half an hour or more a day loses lots of money. Companies are increasingly recognising that they are losing out, both in terms of turnover and image. Not only in the Netherlands, but also elsewhere. For this reason, we are setting up stations in more countries.”
Local testing
By creating a larger spread among the control stations, sites can be monitored from more points throughout the world. WatchMouse is responding to increasing demand from clients for a world-wide picture of site availability. WatchMouse’s clients can also stipulate a preferred station for 'local' testing. For this reason, China and Great Britain have been added as two strategically important markets for e-commerce. The Utrecht company’s other stations operate from Florida, Texas, Sydney, Nuremberg, Orleans, Amsterdam and Singapore.
WatchMouse
WatchMouse has been monitoring internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies all over the world since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of clients in more than 70 countries. The company’s services are available in seven languages, analyses are performed from a range of locations and networks via the world-wide monitoring network.
This press release in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
Columns
What do you want to check with a service such as Watchmouse? (2005-01-31)
As I explained in my previous column, you can use a monitoring service in a number of roles. Common to all these roles is the fact that
you are keeping alive some services for the benefit of your customers,
suppliers, employees or partners. These users are, in the end, all that
counts.
What are the objects that you should be checking? Obviously, the least
you want to do is check the service that is most visible to these users.
This could be the webserver, or a POP or FTP server for example. You
would start by setting up a rule to check the server and a URL. The frequency with which you can monitor (that is: the elapsed
time between checks) is typically limited by the type of subscription
that you have. Only in specific cases would you not check as often as your
subscription allows.
Note that there is a difference between a CONNECT on port 80 rule and a HTTP rule.
The first just connects to the port that the webserver is supposed to
use. The HTTP rule also checks whether the webserver can produce a valid HTTP
response, and whether the document can be found. You probably want the latter check.
Similar reasoning applies to POP and FTP checks. If you set up two different rules on the same host, this allows you to distinguish for example between a broken webserver and a host that is down. If you want even more content
oriented checks, have a look at the so-called PLUG-IN rules.
Additionally, you can set up checks to make sure that your
users are actually using the services that you intend them to. The whole
Internet depends heavily on the domain name system(DNS) functioning correctly. If it does not work properly your users may be directed to
another site than you intended. This could be a configuration error, but
it could also be a defamation hack. In either case, you want to know.
First of all you want to check whether the root servers of the Internet
accurately find the DNS that is serving you. This can be checked with a
DNSNS rule. What you are checking with this rule is whether the registrar's databases are correct. Second, you want to check if that DNS server (and its
slaves) are serving up the proper IP address for the server. For this
you can use the DNSA rule, and it will warn you if the DNS server is not
working or serves up the wrong address. (Note that the hosting party can
change that address at its discretion, as part of a renumbering
operation for example.)
Who should you notify of rule failures? Again, different roles have
different information requirements. You want to notify the person who
can fix things as soon as possible. Mail or SMS/text them directly, you do
not want to be in the loop. You might set up an escalation chain, which
fires off after a certain amount of errors. Note: make sure that
you send the message on a channel that is not affected by the outage: if
your e-mail system does not work, delivering a message to that effect
should not depend on that e-mail system.
The people in charge of overseeing somebody else's service levels should
only get escalation messages, if at all. Rather, they should get the
weekly or monthly service reports.
Peter van Eijk is a management consultant specialized in management of network infrastructures. He can be reached via his contact page.
Security news
Grip CDDB Response Multiple Matches Buffer Overflow Vulnerability (2008-11-21)
A buffer-overflow in Grip occurs when the software processes a response to a CDDB query that has more than 16 matches.
To exploit this issue, an attacker must be able to influence the response to a CDDB query, either by controlling a malicious CDDB server or through some other means. Successful exploits will allow arbitrary code to run.
Grip 3.1.2 and 3.2.0 are affected; other versions may also be affected.
Mandiant First Response Multiple Denial of Service and Agent Hijacking Vulnerabilities (2006-12-18)
Mandiant First Response is prone to multiple vulnerabilities. The issues include a denial-of-service vulnerability and an agent-hijacking vulnerability.
These issues allow remote attackers to crash the application, denying further service to legitimate users and to potentially control the data between the client and server.
Cisco Releases Security Documents for Vulnerabilities (2007-12-05)
Cisco has released security documents in reponse to two vulnerabilities.
Cisco Security Advisory
99837 was released in response to a vulnerability in Cisco Security Agent for Microsoft Windows. This vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial-of-service condition.
Cisco Security Response
100240 was released in response to a vulnerability in CiscoWorks Server. This vulnerability may allow an attacker to inject malicious script into a web pages by enticing a user to follow a specially crafted URL.
US-CERT encourages users to do the following:
- Review Cisco Security Advisory 99837
- Review Cisco Security Response 100240
- Apply software updates and workarounds provided by Cisco
- Do not follow unsolicited links
More information will be provided as it becomes available.
