News
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 availability 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
BadBoy Software updates scripting recorder to improve WatchMouse's Functional testing service (2009-01-07)
The WatchMouse Functional testing service allows you to define multi-step tests through a website and replay them periodically from the WatchMouse monitoring stations. This goes beyond just monitoring site performance and uptime, it allows you to verify that your web applications and back end systems really work.
More information on this service can be found on the Transaction Monitoring & Web Application Testing page.
In a co-operation with BadBoy software, who provide a tailored version of their recoder software which allows you to upload the resulting script directly into your WatchMouse dashboard.
Feedback from our "Functional testing" customers has lead to several essential improvements to the BadBoy recorder. This improved version has now been released and we recommend all our customers to upgrade to this version.
The new - WatchMouse specific - version can be downloaded here:
http://www.badboy.com.au/versions/BadboyInstaller-2.0-latest_wm.exe
The most important changes are:
CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.7
#1097: Multipart Forms Incorrectly export Parameters to JMeter Encoded causing Double Encoding
#1087: Use Follow-Redirect Option in JMeter for More Reliable Export Playback
#1086: Export Referer and Other Default Headers to JMeter
#1085: Assertions placed as Children of Requests not Exported to JMeter
CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.6.1
#1075: Security Update (MS08-052 - Critical)
The full release notes can be found here:
http://badboy.com.au/versions/ReleaseNotes-2.0.7.txt
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
"Want to know the performance of your website?" (2006-11-29)
- WatchMouse launches Site Monitor for PC users –
Netherlands, November 29, 2006 - WatchMouse launches its free WatchMouse Site Monitor for Windows. This application provides PC users insight into the availability of their website(s) at all times. The Site Monitor can be downloaded for free at the WatchMouse website. Installing it only takes a minute.
The Site Monitor checks your company's site or your personal website at fixed intervals (5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes) from your own pc. When an error is found, or after 2 to 5 consecutive errors, you are alerted and the error is verified by all WatchMouse monitoring stations. Also, the availability of the site in the last 72 hours is shown in a performance chart.
The Site Monitor can be combined with a free WatchMouse account.
This gives you the following extra benefits:
- The application can show you the monitoring results of all websites included in the account
- The monitoring is not only done from your own PC, but also from more than 20 WatchMouse checkpoints worldwide
- The application shows performance charts for any period in the Site Monitor
- In case of an alert the WatchMouse site is launched for more details
- Monitoring continues even when the PC is without an internet connection
In exchange for these extra benefits WatchMouse asks you to place a small uptime banner on the sites that are monitored.
The WatchMouse Site Monitor for Windows can be downloaded for free at http://www.watchmouse.com/windows/site_monitor.php
Installing it only takes a minute.
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/
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
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 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 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.
