Digging Deep on Web Performance Analytics with HTTP Archive and BigQuery
As a Web developer or IT team member, you can never have too much data detailing the performance of your website and how it compares to others across the industry. One simple way to understand how your website performance compares to a cross sampling of the internet takes just three steps:
Monitoring SSL Migration – The road to HTTPS being the default on the web
Google Announces HTTPS as a Ranking Signal for SEO It’s official, Google openly “encourage(s) all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the
Using Dotcom-Monitor’s Services, NCM Online Finds Midsized Web Hosts are the Best
Leveraging Dotcom-Monitor services, NCM Online developed fact-based observations about the performance of 20 leading web hosts in June, and continues to test additional hosts throughout the year (the most recent update to the list was 8/2/2014). These tests include purchasing a shared hosting plan from each provider and gathering page-load speed averages and uptime percentages from at least 10 concurrent days using identical websites on each provider. This process provides 2 of the ten criteria NCM Online uses to rank different shared hosting service providers.
New Features: Dashboards and Visual Traceroute
User Interface Update: There are several exciting new features along with some updated cosmetic changes to the Dotcom-Monitor user interface. Here is a brief overview of the changes: The color scheme
Facebook Down – Free Worldwide Test Tool
Dotcom-Monitor is currently tracking a Facebook downtime incident.
To verify the current status of Facebook in real-time from around the world, users can attempt to connect simultaneously from 20 locations worldwide using Dotcom-Monitor’s free Facebook downtime test tool.
How To Monitor Voice Connectivity – Inbound Line & SIP Monitoring
Voice Connectivity is Critical. Your phone systems have gone down and you are unable to communicate with your customers. After several hours of troubleshooting you have managed to get the services up again but what do you do now? Whether you utilize a SIP based VoIP system, digital voice over T1 lines or POTS (plain old telephone service), those voice services need to be available.
The Website is Down! – How Proactive DNS Monitoring Can Help
How Often are You Asked “Is the Website Down?” Such calls can lead to hours of lost time only to find out it was a minor issue for a limited user base. Do you have the tools in place to proactively detect and deal with such issues?
New Features to Test How DNS Caching Affects Your Website
The new DNS caching features at Dotcom-Monitor allow you to perform some interesting tests that show how DNS caching can affect your page load speed.
We realize that many organizations monitor their online services with a number different goals in mind, and so we listened to the feedback we received that some users want to include the DNS response time in their monitoring and some users want to be able to remove DNS response from their monitors.
How you wish to handle DNS response time in regard to your monitoring needs is up to you, but we want to take this opportunity to show the differences in how DNS response time affects website load using our new tools.
We ran a test monitoring YouTube from a single location in the midwest United States with three different DNS cache settings. A basic HTTP full page load on the YouTube front page resulted in some interesting, although not that surprising results.
Keep in mind the results will vary depending upon a number of variables such as which locations you are monitoring from, the time of day, the load on the DNS servers, and on the website servers.
Four Tips to Beat Single Page Design – Parallax Performance Issues
Parallax websites are compelling and easy to follow. However, because all of the graphics and text are on one page and these sites often use video, they can also be a performance nightmare if not optimized correctly.
A Tale of Monitoring DNS Blacklists
For George, the clean-up is just beginning. He is not even yet aware that his domain is blacklisted. All he knows is that he can’t send out additional emails, the update email on the company party that evening is now a fire-drill, and his boss is giving the system administrator and him the stink eye. The problem of not knowing for hours that your site has appeared on a DNS Blacklist (DNSBL) and that email—and, even worse, potentially website visitors—are being rejected is a problem with both primary impacts and multiple secondary impacts.
Dotcom-Monitor adds VictorOps as Integration Partner
Integration furthers speed and effectiveness of WebOps, DevOps, and network teams’ support of applications, networks, and infrastructures.
Innovations in Microsoft Exchange Monitoring
Microsoft Exchange continues to grow in popularity, but until recently active monitoring via full round-trip processes have been lacking in the marketplace. As a result network administrators have found it difficult to accurately pinpoint Microsoft Exchange issues effectively. Dotcom-Monitor’s Microsoft Exchange Monitoring, actively monitors both the availability and performance of Exchange components and provides alerts and diagnostics information when an issue is detected. Among a wealth of other features, the solution includes the industry’s only tool for monitoring ActiveSync externally, so it mimics the same experience a real user would receive.
