Web Site Availability Monitoring

New version of WatchMouse widget available (2006-10-03)

WatchMouse widget for Apple computers has been expanded: from local monitoring to worldwide monitoring.

The WatchMouse Site Monitoring Dashboard widget was already available for local monitoring, but the current version (2.0.4) can now also be linked to your WatchMouse account. The widget, which already checked one website every 1, 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes from your own computer, can now also be used to display the checks of the websites in your account and the availability of these websites during the past 24 hours. In the event of a malfunction, a check is performed by all WatchMouse monitoring stations. The widget provides an immediate warning or a warning after 2 to 5 successive errors.

The expanded WatchMouse Site Monitoring widget can be downloaded free of charge from the WatchMouse website and can be installed within 1 minute. URL: http://www.watchmouse.com/widget/dashboard_widget.php

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

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.

"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.

FTSE 100 websites suffer from poor performance (2006-04-13)

WatchMouse research shows that 57% of FTSE 100 websites availability is below industry standards

London, April 18, 2006 - Of the 100 companies listed on the FTSE, 57 have websites with poor availability. Many of the sites are badly accessible or unavailable for more than an hour per month.

The worst site, that of United Utilities, is even unavailable for an equivalent of more than 5 days per month.

This was the conclusion drawn from the WatchMouse Site Availability Index for the FTSE 100, created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of FTSE 100 achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between March 2 and April 10, 2006. Every five minutes, one of WatchMouse’s test stations tried to access the homepage of the site, which was expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors.

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. There were fourteen sites which achieved perfect 100% availability. The availability of the two worst performers was less than 91%; Scottish Power (90.78%) and United Utilities (81.53%).

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With several sites, we found an uptime that was worse than that of many smaller companies. This is worrying as the FTSE companies in particular should give a great deal of priority to their corporate image. Maximum uptime should be part of the overall 'brand performance'."

Pors suspects that for some sites, the popularity could be a reason for poor availability. "Some of the sites belonging to FTSE 100 will get a lot of traffic. However, 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%."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing the 100 sites, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2006/FTSE100.php

Spanish websites suffer from poor performance (2005-12-04)

WatchMouse research shows that 71% of IBEX websites availability is below industry standards

MADRID, 20051121 - Of the top 35 funds listed on the Bolsa de Madrid (IBEX), 25 have websites with poor to dramatically poor availability. Many of the sites are badly accessible or unavailable for more than an hour per month.

The worst site, that of Antena 3 TV, is even unavailable for an equivalent of more than 8 days per month.

This was the conclusion drawn from the first Spanish Site Availability Index created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of IBEX funds achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between October 23 and November 11, 2005. Every five minutes, one of WatchMouse’s test stations tried to access the homepage of the site, which was expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors.

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. There were only five sites which achieved perfect 100% availability - Sogecable, Arcelor, FCC, BSCH and Altadis. The availability of the three worst performers was less than 95%; Acerinox (94.66%), Gamesa (86.54%) and Antena 3 TV with 73.05%.

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With several sites, we found an uptime that was worse than that of many smaller companies. This is worrying as IBEX funds in particular should give a great deal of priority to their corporate image. Maximum uptime should be part of the overall 'brand performance'."

Pors suspects that for some sites, the popularity could be a reason for poor availability. "Some of the sites belonging to IBEX funds will get a lot of traffic. However, 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%."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing the 35 sites, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/en/availabilityindex/2005/IBEX.php

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 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analysis are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com

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

4 New APIs: Wine, Whois and Website Monitoring (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse API: The WatchMouse service checks the behavior and availability of websites. WatchMouse "allows site owners to optimize the internet experience of their customers. A worldwide network checks websites from 40 different locations in 25 countries around the globe."

Euro 2008 losers are actually web site winners. (2010-01-13)

France may have left Euro 2008 with its tail between its legs after a humiliating defeat by Italy, but the country still topped the league when it came to having the best sporting web site. For what little consolation that brings.

WatchMouse, a website performance monitoring outfit, carried out its own nailbiting tournament to find the Euro 2008 nation with the best sport website by fashioning an index which takes into account three parameters; errors, speed (load time) and availability.