Web Server Monitoring

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.

Redesigned WatchMouse site and new product plans (2009-12-24)

We’re pleased to announce the redesign and launch of www.watchmouse.com. The new site is faster, more responsive and designed to be much more intuitive. Don't take our word for it though, try it yourself and let us know what you think!

The changes:

• Clean, task-oriented design
• Faster page loads
• Improved main console for a better overview of your monitors and better access to the monitoring details
• New "dashboards" featuring related, grouped information and tasks
• A new dashboard selector on every page after you log in, just below the search field

We’ve also introduced chat support. You can now chat directly on the site whenever the support team is online (normally 8 AM to 8 PM Central European Time or GMT+1).

Stay tuned for even more usability improvements and additional features coming up in Q1 of next year!

New Product Plans

You asked and we listened! We’ve received many requests for expanded plans, and also for a slimmed down plan for personal use. Additionally, the functional test (scripts) we introduced last year have become very popular, so we decided to add these tests in all professional packages.

The changes:

• We added functional tests to the Webmaster and Corporate plans, plus a one-minute monitor in the Corporate plan - all at the same price
• Two new professional plans have been added: the Enterprise Plan with 100 monitors (including 20 functional tests) and the Multi-Site Plan
• The Gold Plan that included 10-minute monitors only, has been discontinued, however current customers can still continue to use this package
• All Professional Plans now include complementary vulnerability scans to verify that your site and server is safe
• Lastly, we added the Personal Plan, a cost-effective plan for small sites, and we beefed up the free, Lite Plan so it now checks at 20-minute intervals

Full details can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/compare_plans.php

Take a look at the new WatchMouse website and give us your feedback. Bear in mind we’re still adding content and polishing the edges, but we'd be delighted to hear your thoughts and comments!

Happy holidays!

Stan P. van de Burgt

CEO

WatchMouse

P.S. You may find an occasional English word in the non-English sites. Please note that these will be replaced within the next few days.

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

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.

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/

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.

WatchMouse: Recently added scans (2008-02-08)

The most recently added vulnerability checks and solutions for the WatchMouse Periodic Vulnerability Scan.

• 2008-02-07 - WinComLPD LPD Monitoring Server Authentication Bypass Vulnerability (High)
• 2008-02-07 - Adobe Reader < 8.1.2 (High)
• 2008-02-07 - WinComLPD LPD Monitoring Server Default Credentials (High)
• 2008-02-07 - HP Virtual Rooms WebHPVCInstall.HPVirtualRooms14 ActiveX Control Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (High)

Linksys WVC54GCA Wireless-G 'adm/file.cgi' Multiple Directory Traversal Vulnerabilities (2009-04-28)

Linksys WVC54GCA Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera is prone to multiple directory-traversal vulnerabilities because the software fails to sufficiently sanitize user-supplied input.

An attacker can exploit these issues using directory-traversal strings ('../') to download arbitrary files with the privileges of the server process. Information obtained may aid in further attacks.

Linksys WVC54GCA Wireless-G Internet Home Monitoring Camera firmware 1.00R22 and 1.00R24 are affected; other versions may also be vulnerable.

Ping from all our monitoring stations (2005-12-09)

You can now use our improved ping tool to ping your server from each of our monitoring stations.

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