Dotcom-Monitor tracks the Hurricane Sandy impact as it relates Service Providers, Data Centers, and Servers. Live Northeast network latency test available.
Despite efforts to avoid bank website outages they have occurred on a very broad scale in 2012 are likely to continue to occur. Therefore, it is the banks that most effectively respond to website downtime issues that have a market advantage in avoiding the loss of bank website users.
Downtime events like the Sept 27, 2012, PNC Financials website outage make for compelling headlines, banker headaches, and bank website user annoyances. But, is this downtime more than that? Is it another locus-of-control (digital access to money) in the modern age that is spinning out-of-control into an encroaching cyber black hole of economic chaos? Well no, but… downtime and slow downs do have an impact.
The GoDaddy DNS outage and Paternity Test: Who’s your GoDaddy? Its another episode of the Maury Povich Paternity Test on DNS Outage TV yesterday. Having just written about a major AT&T DNS outage on Aug. 15, here we are again on Sept 10, 2012 witnessing the GoDaddy DNS outage. Millions of website and email users DNS look-up process is playing out like a Maury Povich TV episode of paternity testing gone wrong. First time visitors to a GoDaddy website type the GoDaddy URL into their browser and the answer from the DNS comes back “This aint your GoDaddy.” Or something like that.
To Cache or Not-to-Cache – that is the DNS Monitoring Question
Firstly, it is not generally well-known that external-based HTTP request-type website monitoring, like coffee at your local java joint, comes in different “grades” – cache-based and non-cache based. Dotcom-Monitor employs non-cached monitoring, which propagates through the full DNS process with each monitoring instance. Cache-based monitoring (used by many basic monitoring services) does not propagate through the DNS process and misses DNS issues.
How to Effectively Monitor for the next DNS Outage Situation
In the case of the AT&T DNS outage issue there are several key factors that help to speed up Time-to-Repair (TTR), or avoiding downtime.
Doing DNS Monitoring Right: The AT&T DNS Outage: The AT&T domain name server (DNS) outage of Aug. 15, 2012 exemplifies why a “non-cache based” method for monitoring of websites is important for mission-critical websites. Firstly, a bit of a review. The most common, basic form of website monitoring is conducted using a synthetic browser (not an actual browser), which connects to the target server via an HTTP request process. A number of server-focused processes, such as the availability of the target server, the time it takes to load the HTML file for the website from the server, and the capability to detect keywords within the HTML file are checked via the use of a synthetic browser using an HTTP request process.
August 15, 2012-The ATT DNS outage demonstrates the importance of real-time root cause diagnostics when monitoring Internet services. Intermittent ATT DNS errors were first detected at 5:23 AM PST by Dotcom-Monitor a full hour before AT&T reported the issue. The Dotcom-Monitor Minnesota node noted the issue and captured a diagnostic DNS trace at the time of error. Non-clients of Dotcom-Monitor can use a free DNS trace tool here to test if their domain is affected by selecting Trace Style “DNS”.
This piece of info was sent immediately to Dotcom-Monitor clients whose services were affected by the ATT DNS outage. This diagnostic gave Dotcom-Monitor clients immediate info that pinpointed the root cause of the issue without the need for additional troubleshooting. Dotcom-Monitor clients using ATT DNS made extremely fast, informed decisions, such as moving their DNS to another provider, or taking alternative measures to re-route traffic.
Aug. 15, 2012- Dotcom-Monitor is monitoring a DNS issue involving ATT DNS nameservers and will provide updates as new details emerge.
The Great Firewall Test utilizes an Internet Explorer browser that originates from Shanghai, China and travels to the target website. The website monitoring test is free and determines if a website (or specific elements of a website) are filtered out by the “Great Firewall of China.”
Level3 Communications and AT&T appear to be having ongoing issues over the last couple days resulting in experienced outages.
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