Website monitoring
Encyclopedia
Website monitoring is the process of testing and verifying that end-users can interact with a website
or web application
. Website monitoring is often used by businesses to ensure that their sites are live and responding.
Website monitoring companies that offer website performance monitoring allow businesses to simulate the actions of thousands of visitors to a website and observe how it responds. They also simulate visitors across multiple geographies and servers Internet connections. Performance monitoring tools send out alerts when pages or parts of a website malfunction, which allows the webmaster
to correct issues faster.
Website Security monitoring is also used to verify that a domain (and web site) is not only responding properly, but has not been hacked, blacklisted or hijacked.
Multiple tools are available to automate site availability checks and security checks.
is minimized. Users that rely on a website or an application for work or pleasure will get frustrated or even stop using the application if it is not reliably available. Monitoring can cover many things that an application needs to function, like network connectivity, Domain Name System records, database connectivity, bandwidth, and computer resources like free RAM, CPU load, disk space, events, etc. Commonly measured metrics are response time
and availability
(or uptime
), but consistency and reliability metrics are gaining popularity. Measuring a website's availability and reliability under various amounts of traffic is often referred to as load testing
.
solutions focus on inside the firewall monitoring, whereas external performance monitoring will test and monitor performance issues across the Internet backbone
and in some cases all the way to the end-user
.
Inside firewall monitoring is done by special hardware appliances which can help you determine if your internal
applications’ sluggish performance is caused by: design of applications, internal infrastructure, internal applications or connections to any public internet.
External performance monitoring is also known as end-user monitoring or end-to-end
performance monitoring.
Real user monitoring
measures the performance and availability experienced by actual users, diagnoses individual incidents, and tracks the impact of a change.
, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS
, SSH
, Telnet
, SSL, TCP
, PING
, Domain Name Expiry, SSL Certificate Expiry and a range of other ports with great variety of check intervals from every 4 hours to every one minute. Typically, most website monitoring services test your server anywhere between once-per hour to once-per-minute.
Advanced services offer in-browser web transaction monitoring based on browser addons such as Selenium
or iMacros
. These services test a website by remote controlling a large number of web browsers, thus they can also detect websites issues such a Javascript bugs that are browser specific.
Time performances: for example an HTTP page should answer in less than 1 second (for a download of 16Ko) to be considered as "good".
An implementation of time performance monitoring for the Apache HTTP Server
is the mod_arm4 module.
, IM, regular and cell phones, SMS
, fax, pagers, Skype
, RSS Feed etc.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
or web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
. Website monitoring is often used by businesses to ensure that their sites are live and responding.
Website monitoring companies that offer website performance monitoring allow businesses to simulate the actions of thousands of visitors to a website and observe how it responds. They also simulate visitors across multiple geographies and servers Internet connections. Performance monitoring tools send out alerts when pages or parts of a website malfunction, which allows the webmaster
Webmaster
A webmaster , also called a web architect, web developer, site author, or website administrator is a person responsible for maintaining one or many websites...
to correct issues faster.
Website Security monitoring is also used to verify that a domain (and web site) is not only responding properly, but has not been hacked, blacklisted or hijacked.
Multiple tools are available to automate site availability checks and security checks.
What for?
Monitoring is essential to ensure that a website is available to users and downtimeDowntime
The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable.Downtime or outage duration refers to a period of time that a system fails to provide or perform its primary function...
is minimized. Users that rely on a website or an application for work or pleasure will get frustrated or even stop using the application if it is not reliably available. Monitoring can cover many things that an application needs to function, like network connectivity, Domain Name System records, database connectivity, bandwidth, and computer resources like free RAM, CPU load, disk space, events, etc. Commonly measured metrics are response time
Response time
In technology, response time is the time a system or functional unit takes to react to a given input.- Data processing :In data processing, the response time perceived by the end user is the interval between the instant at which an operator at a terminal enters a request for a response from a...
and availability
Availability
In telecommunications and reliability theory, the term availability has the following meanings:* The degree to which a system, subsystem, or equipment is in a specified operable and committable state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for at an unknown, i.e., a random, time...
(or uptime
Uptime
Uptime is a measure of the time a machine has been up without any downtime.It is often used as a measure of computer operating system reliability or stability, in that this time represents the time a computer can be left unattended without crashing, or needing to be rebooted for administrative or...
), but consistency and reliability metrics are gaining popularity. Measuring a website's availability and reliability under various amounts of traffic is often referred to as load testing
Load testing
Load testing is the process of putting demand on a system or device and measuring its response. Load testing is performed to determine a system’s behavior under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions. It helps to identify the maximum operating capacity of an application as well as any...
.
Inside or outside monitoring
Website monitoring can be done from both inside and outside of a corporate firewall. Traditional Network ManagementNetwork management
Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems....
solutions focus on inside the firewall monitoring, whereas external performance monitoring will test and monitor performance issues across the Internet backbone
Internet backbone
The Internet backbone refers to the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected networks and core routers in the Internet...
and in some cases all the way to the end-user
End-user
Economics and commerce define an end user as the person who uses a product. The end user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product...
.
Inside firewall monitoring is done by special hardware appliances which can help you determine if your internal
applications’ sluggish performance is caused by: design of applications, internal infrastructure, internal applications or connections to any public internet.
External performance monitoring is also known as end-user monitoring or end-to-end
End-to-end
End-to-end or End to End may refer to:*Land's End to John o'Groats, the journey from "End to End" across Great Britain*End-to-end auditable voting systems, a voting system*End-to-end principle, a principal design element of the Internet...
performance monitoring.
Real user monitoring
Real user monitoring
Real user monitoring is a passive web monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website is important to website operators to determine if users are being served quickly, error free and if not which part of a business process...
measures the performance and availability experienced by actual users, diagnoses individual incidents, and tracks the impact of a change.
What impact?
| If it's up... | A.K.A... | It's down... per year |
|---|---|---|
| 90% | n/a | 876 hours |
| 95% | n/a | 438 hours |
| 99% | two 9's | 87 hours, 36 minutes |
| 99.9% | three 9's | 8 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds |
| 99.99% | four 9's | 52 minutes, 33.6 seconds |
| 99.999% | five 9's | 5 minutes, 15.36 seconds |
| 99.9999% | six 9's | 31.68 seconds |
Various types of protocol
Website monitoring service can check HTTP pages, HTTPSHttps
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server...
, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
, SSH
Secure Shell
Secure Shell is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network: a server and a client...
, Telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
, SSL, TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
, PING
Ping
Ping is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer...
, Domain Name Expiry, SSL Certificate Expiry and a range of other ports with great variety of check intervals from every 4 hours to every one minute. Typically, most website monitoring services test your server anywhere between once-per hour to once-per-minute.
Advanced services offer in-browser web transaction monitoring based on browser addons such as Selenium
Selenium (software)
Selenium is a portable software testing framework for web applications. Selenium provides a record/playback tool for authoring tests without learning a test scripting language . It also provides a test domain-specific language to write tests in a number of popular programming languages, including...
or iMacros
IMacros
iMacros is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer web browsers which adds record and replay functionality similar to that found in web testing and form filler software. The macros can be combined and controlled via JavaScript. Demo macros and JavaScript code...
. These services test a website by remote controlling a large number of web browsers, thus they can also detect websites issues such a Javascript bugs that are browser specific.
Time performances: for example an HTTP page should answer in less than 1 second (for a download of 16Ko) to be considered as "good".
An implementation of time performance monitoring for the Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
is the mod_arm4 module.
Various type of monitoring
You may monitor a single page of your website, but you can also monitor a complete business process (often referred to as multi-step transactions).Servers around the globe
Website monitoring services usually have a number of servers around the globe - USA, Europe, Asia, Australia and other locations. By having multiple servers in different geographic locations, monitoring service can determine if a Web server is available across different Networks worldwide. Some vendors claim that the more locations the better picture on your website availability while others say that three globally distributed stations are sufficient and more stations do not give more information.Types of website monitoring
There are two main types of website monitoring- Synthetic monitoringSynthetic monitoringSynthetic monitoring is website monitoring that is done using a web browser emulation or scripted real web browsers. Behavioral scripts are created to simulate an action or path that a customer or end-user would take on a site...
also known as active monitoring, and - Passive monitoringPassive monitoringPassive monitoring is a technique used to capture traffic from a network by generating a copy of that traffic, often from a span port or mirror port or via a network tap...
also known as real monitoring.
Notification options - alerts
As the information brought by website monitoring services is in most cases urgent and may be of crucial importance, various notification methods, often known as "alerts" are used: e-mailE-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, IM, regular and cell phones, SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
, fax, pagers, Skype
Skype
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...
, RSS Feed etc.
See also
- Synthetic monitoringSynthetic monitoringSynthetic monitoring is website monitoring that is done using a web browser emulation or scripted real web browsers. Behavioral scripts are created to simulate an action or path that a customer or end-user would take on a site...
- Real user monitoringReal user monitoringReal user monitoring is a passive web monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website is important to website operators to determine if users are being served quickly, error free and if not which part of a business process...
- Internet Server MonitoringInternet Server MonitoringInternet server monitoring is much wider than website monitoring. Monitoring a web server means that the server owner always knows if one or all of his services go down. Web server monitoring may be internal, i.e. web server software checks its status and notifies the owner if some services go...
- Web analyticsWeb analyticsWeb analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
- Website trackingWebsite trackingWebsite tracking refers to the act of archiving existing websites and tracking changes to the website over time. There are many applications to website tracking which can be applied to many different business. The different applications are listed in depth below:- Website monitoring :Website...
- Application Performance ManagementApplication Performance ManagementApplication performance management, or APM, refers to the discipline within systems management that focuses on monitoring and managing the performance and service availability of software applications....
- Network ManagementNetwork managementNetwork management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems....
- TracerouteTraceroutetraceroute is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol network. Traceroute is available on most operating systems....
- Network monitoringNetwork monitoringThe term network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator in case of outages...