Server Uptime Software

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.

Multiple alert addresses & Escalation (2005-01-31)

In the Addresses section of this site you can now manage address groups. This feature can be used for two purposes:

Multiple addresses

When an error condition is detected, multiple recipients of all types (email, icq, server uptime software/text messaging) can be alerted at the same time.

Escalation

Alternatively, alerts can be sent to different addresses at different stages; E.g. the first time an error occurs, the event is only logged, the second time, an SMS/text message is sent to the administrator and his assistant and the third time, an e-mail is sent to the support desk.

The number of groups you can define is unlimited.

Decide what's in Peter van Eijk's next column (2005-01-31)

Dr. Peter van Eijk is a Senior Management Consultant at a major international consultancy firm. He writes a monthly column on Monitoring Services. His latest column can be found here.

We would love to hear from you what topic his next column should cover. At the bottom of the column you can leave your opinion in a poll. Please let us know!

LB Icon selects WatchMouse for independent site server uptime software (2005-01-31)

LB Icon and WatchMouse signed a contract for the server uptime software of LB Icons? customers. Using the WatchMouse services, LB Icon expects to raise its service level even higher. See the press page for more information.

LB Icon chooses WatchMouse for independent website monitoring (2005-01-31)

Customer websites verified from the visitors' perspective

LB Icon and WatchMouse have signed a contract for the continuous monitoring 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 server uptime software 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 periodical reports, it is possible to see if the server uptime software 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 available. 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 monitor 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 available in 8 languages and analysis is performed through its worldwide monitoring network at different locations and networks. WatchMouse has thousands of users in more than 70 countries.

http://www.watchmouse.com/

WatchMouse opens new monitoring server uptime softwares 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 server uptime softwares: in Hong Kong and London. At the same time, the company’s server uptime software 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 server uptime softwares, 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 server uptime software 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 server uptime softwares in more countries.”

Local testing

By creating a larger spread among the control server uptime softwares, 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 server uptime software 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 server uptime softwares 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

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

Rapidly growing WatchMouse wins Deloitte’s Rising Star award (2005-09-23)

WatchMouse is one of the three winners of Deloitte’s Rising Star award. This award is presented annually to rapidly expanding technology companies less than five years old. WatchMouse has been active worldwide for three years in the area of site and server monitoring. With 16 monitoring server uptime softwares throughout the world, WatchMouse monitors the availability of customers’ websites, immediately sounding the alarm in the event of problems.

The Rising Stars are presented as part of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ceremony, the fifty most rapidly expanding technology businesses. The Rising Stars have the potential to lead the Technology Fast 50 in the near future. Stan van de Burgt (42), Niels Eijsbroek (40) and Mark Pors (38) first came up with the idea for WatchMouse in 2001. The concept was as unique as it was clear: to monitor the availability of sites and servers by constantly simulating web traffic. If a site is not responding or an error is found, the customer is notified immediately by SMS, pager, IM or e-mail. From the moment the concept went 'live', in 2002, the pace has been frenetic: turnover doubled each year. Web sites are now monitored from sixteen monitoring server uptime softwares worldwide 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The WatchMouse application is entirely web-based: customers do not have to install software or hardware at their site, and the application excels in its self-service aspects while staying easy to use. This allows WatchMouse to operate with a small core of permanent employees, supplemented by external support. Prospective customers can specify their requirements in detail on the WatchMouse site. A range of starter packages is available, priced from € 17.50 per month up to € 450 per month. 400 paying customers in 40 countries worldwide now make use of WatchMouse’s services. These include hosting companies, government bodies, and companies such as LB Icon, Scania, Siemens, Orange, ING, GeoTrust, Citibank, and Postbank.

Self-service as a success factor

Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer, says he was “pleasantly surprised by the award”. “I am very happy that the jury shares our vision of self-service and our market approach." Pors sees WatchMouse as “the right initiative at the right moment. Companies are increasingly looking to outsource non-core tasks. However, they want to be able to guide and control this themselves and from their own workplace. Web-based services make this possible." Stan van de Burgt, CEO, sees the simplicity of the WatchMouse site and the various languages in which it is available as the major success factors. "Monitoring websites was an idea that already existed in essence, but had not been worked out in this form. We are geared tightly to 'self service', whereby customers can set up everything themselves and retain total control. Which also means we are able to offer the service at a more attractive price than other players in the market.”

The Rising Star awards were presented on Thursday, 22 September.

WatchMouse

WatchMouse assesses your website and e-commerce applications just like your customers experience them. The checks are carried out from 16 monitoring server uptime softwares worldwide, and recorded in regular reports. In the event of errors or availability problems, the right people within your organisation will be server uptime softwareed.

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 server uptime software 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 server uptime software 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

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

We guarantee our customers 100% uptime. To fulfill this guarantee, we use several server uptime software 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 server uptime software 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 Periodic Vulnerability Scanning has enabled us... (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse Periodic Vulnerability Scanning has enabled us to overcome the time consuming task of managing server uptime software internally. The removal of all duplicate findings and neat presentation in the WatchMouse Customer Console further reduces the time Lectric Webservices has to spend on maintaining secure systems.

General Manager, LECTRIC Webservices

What do you want to server uptime software 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 server uptime softwareing? Obviously, the least you want to do is server uptime software 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 server uptime software the server and a URL. The frequency with which you can monitor (that is: the elapsed time between server uptime softwares) is typically limited by the type of subscription that you have. Only in specific cases would you not server uptime software 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 server uptime softwares to the port that the webserver is supposed to use. The HTTP rule also server uptime softwares whether the webserver can produce a valid HTTP response, and whether the document can be found. You probably want the latter server uptime software.
Similar reasoning applies to POP and FTP server uptime softwares. 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 server uptime softwares, have a look at the so-called PLUG-IN rules. Additionally, you can set up server uptime softwares 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 server uptime software whether the root servers of the Internet accurately find the DNS that is serving you. This can be server uptime softwareed with a DNSNS rule. What you are server uptime softwareing with this rule is whether the registrar's databases are correct. Second, you want to server uptime software 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.

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 server uptime software various aspects with different rules. Use one rule to download the homepage, another to server uptime software the DNS and a third to server uptime software server uptime softwareivity 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 server uptime softwareed 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

Online shops, speed and downtime, 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 online shop.

These online 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 online shop, or the online 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 downtime on a website go to its competitor. A majority of online shoppers say performance and uptime influences their choice of online shop.

The amount of revenue that is lost when your website or online 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% availability, which corresponds to more than 3 days of downtime 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 online 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 server uptime softwareion. 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 online 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 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 server uptime softwareing 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

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

The Ethereal IRC server uptime software 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.

Apple Releases Security Update for Multiple Vulnerabilities (2006-12-14)

Apple has released Security Update 2006-007 to correct multiple vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and related products.

More information about the vulnerabilities can be found in these Vulnerability Notes and Technical Cyber Security Alert TA06-333A.

US-CERT encourages users to apply the appropriate updates as soon as possible.

US-CERT will continue to investigate these vulnerabilities and provide additional information as it becomes available.

Google Search Appliance Vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting (2006-12-14)

US-CERT is aware of a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Google Search Appliance and Google Mini devices. Specifically, the flaw exists in the way that Google Search Appliance and Google Mini devices handle UTF-7 (Unicode Transformation Format) encoded URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier).

Until an official update, patch, or more information becomes available, we recommend the following actions to help mitigate the security risks:

• Disable Active Scripting as specified in the Securing Your Web Browser document.
• Do not follow unsolicited links.
• Review the steps described in Microsoft's document to improve the safety of your browser.

Microsoft Releases December Security Bulletin (2006-12-14)

Microsoft has released updates to address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio as part of the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for December 2006.

We strongly encourage users to review the bulletins and follow best-practice security policies to determine what updates should be applied.

Additionally, more information about these vulnerabilities can be found in the Vulnerability Notes Database and Technical Cyber Security Alert TA06-346A.

Microsoft Windows MessageBoxA Denial of Service Vulnerability (2006-12-22)

Microsoft Windows is prone to a local denial-of-service vulnerability because the operating system fails to handle certain API calls with unexpected parameters.

A local unprivileged attacker may exploit this issue by executing a malicious application.

Successful exploits will crash the operating system, denying further service to legitimate users. Reportedly, this issue may also be exploited to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM-level privileges.

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

Dashboard server uptime software 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...

Online banking sites failing in 24/7 access (2010-01-14)

Unacceptable server uptime software levels in UK online banks

Some 65 per cent of top online banks in the UK have more than one hour server uptime software a month. Out of the 26 banking sites involved in the study only three achieved perfect availability – measuring an uptime of 99.9 percent or higher.

WatchMouse: Tracking The Health Of Web Services (2010-01-23)

As backend APIs (application programming interfaces) power more of our interactions online – as the foundation for applications, server uptime softwares and other platforms – it becomes increasingly important to monitor the status of their uptime.

New features: POSTing forms and Read limit (2005-03-28)

Today, we released the new server uptime software software to our server uptime softwarepoints. New features:

• Post form fields to a webserver (both in http and match rules)
• Limit the number of bytes read. Relevant for server uptime softwareing very large pages or streams

The site will be updated within days. Look at the settings page after logging in.

Test phase Frankfurt server uptime softwarepoint (2005-03-29)

As you may have noticed in your logs, we are slowly introducing a new server uptime software server uptime software in Frankfurt, Germany. Not all server uptime softwares are serviced at this server uptime softwarepoint yet..., and we use in about 5% of the server uptime softwares.

Keep an I on this blog, and on the official news section of our site for the formal announcement!

Next stop: NY (2005-04-13)

This morning our new server uptime softwarepoint in New York was activated. The server uptime softwarepoint at the New York facility is directly connected via a 15 Gbit fiber optic SONET ring with direct connections to Sprint, Level3, AboveNet, Tiscalli and direct hub connections into the PAIX, AMSIX, and DECIX Internet Exchange points.

Timing information added for DNS rules (2005-12-09)

The rules of type 'server uptime softwarea' and 'server uptime softwarens' now also log timing information, which is presented in the 'Download time' graphs and the dtime field in the raw logs. This enables you to monitor the speed of the DNS server while resolving the DNS query.

Ping from all our server uptime software server uptime softwares (2005-12-09)

You can now use our improved ping tool to ping your server from each of our server uptime software server uptime softwares.

In case ping requests are blocked by your firewall or server, you can use the host server uptime software tool alternatively.