Getting to the Core of Website Uptime – Part 1
Website Uptime isn’t a Condition, it’s a Calculation
Central to service level agreement (SLA) reports is the concept of website “uptime.” However, what exactly is uptime? Website uptime, in the recent past was often narrowly defined as the working vs. non-working condition of a web server, ie web server uptime. More recently, we have worked with many organizations that are carefully defining the details of website uptime vs. downtime, by taking into account variables like network uptime, server uptime, web application uptime, or website uptime, has become critical.
How Social Media Makes Websites Anti-Social | Features vs Performance
For most online businesses, integrating social media into their website has enabled them to interact with their customers directly. Social media widgets offer customers the ability to have real-time engagement with the business, its products, and like-minded consumers.
Today’s DevOps are increasingly saddled with third party social media widgets (or applications). By relying on external content, developers become dependent on the quality of that third-party content delivery, which, in turn, impacts the performance of their website. Due to lack of third-party element control, developers find difficulty monitoring vital statistics related to network health.
Developers can use externally-based web performance tools to determine if their social media app integration is worth the wait.
Improving Your Website’s Video Streaming | Monitoring Streaming Video
Internet browsing habits are increasingly visual and video content has taken off in a big way. In fact, Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast predicts over 90 percent of all content on the Net will soon be in some form of video. Cisco also notes the incremental growth in Internet traffic between 2014 and 2015 at 17.2 exabytes per month. As a result of this growth in visual browsing habits, video has become a key component of content strategy.
There are significant challenges when creating quality video experiences and effective video streaming is dependent on several independent functions within a larger system. Broadly speaking, these independent functions include: compression technology, availability of bandwidth, and network infrastructure. If any single component within the system performs poorly, user experience of video streaming can be negatively impacted.
To ensure an optimized user experience involving video streaming, website administrators should implement streaming video monitoring.
Website Monitoring: Improve Customer Conversion and Retention
If your business relies upon e-commerce or online marketing channels to attract customers, it is important that you consider the impact poor website performance can have on your business. At a recent Velocity Conference, Eric Schurman (Microsoft) and Jake Brutlag (Google) presented; “Users who experience a 2-second site slowdown make almost 2% fewer queries, click 3.75% less often, and report being significantly less satisfied with their overall experience.”
With both revenue and customer satisfaction on the line, monitoring the performance, availability and effectiveness of your website is critical. Manually-based website monitoring is not an option. It’s costly, time-intensive, and inconsistent.
DNS Monitoring Improves Web Site Speed and Reliability – Part 2
Dotcom-Monitor uses a non-cache DNS monitoring solution with high frequency monitoring that propagates DNS queries to the root name servers. That means a DNS issue will be identified quickly, as opposed to being masked for days as it might be with a cached monitoring approach. When monitored properly, using a non-cache method, an error is quickly identified so the designated workaround, like a DNS failover, can be implemented.
Dotcom-Monitor non-cached DNS monitoring (unlike some other cache-based DNS monitoring solutions) also provides diagnostics with an automated trace-route as soon as a DNS problem is detected. This means less time investigating the problem and much faster mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). The Dotcom-Monitor DNS monitoring solution also allows website owners to spot trends so that small DNS issues can be addressed before they become big DNS problems.
DNS Monitoring Improves Web Site Speed and Reliability – Part 1
The only way to know how well or how reliably DNS servers perform is to make consistent, regular objective tests and measurements over time. While DNS servers can be verified manually, that is not a practical solution. Manually checking the DNS servers a few times a week, or even a few times a day, simply does not provide enough data to accurately judge performance, nor does it quickly alert website owners to problems. Automatic DNS monitoring gives website owners the information needed.
Three Ways to Measure Content Delivery Networks ROI | CDN Monitoring
Monitoring Content Delivery Networks enables webmasters to regain control of delivery and deployment of CDN content. Monitoring tools that reach into element-level performance of web pages, such as BrowserView Monitoring at Dotcom-Monitor, enable webmasters to quantify returns and increase efficiency of Content Delivery Networks.
Media Stream Monitoring Tool | Streaming Media Monitoring Formats List
Earlier this week Dotcom-Monitor announced ServerView Monitoring™ Media Stream. This technology allows users to monitor a broad range of streaming content from an external “user experience” perspective. In addition to comprehensive data and diagnostic aspects, customizable alerts may be setup for each media stream to continually monitor media performance and availability. Interactive waterfall charts and drill downs amongst the data allow users to locate and repair problems, significantly reducing mean time to repair (MTTR).
Below is a list of streaming media formats currently available for monitoring and testing:
Streaming Media Monitoring Tool | Media Stream Monitoring Codecs List
On February 5, 2013, Dotcom-Monitor announced ServerView Monitoring™ Media Stream. This media stream monitoring technology continually tests internet streams in Chrome, Flash, and Windows Media stream formats. This new Streaming Media Monitoring Tool has the capability to monitor hundreds of online stream formats and codecs from an external “user experience” perspective. Customized instant alerts may be setup for each streaming media monitoring instance to check performance and availability 24×7.
Below is a list of streaming media codecs currently available for monitoring and testing:
Dotcom-Monitor Announces ServerView Monitoring™ Media Stream
Minneapolis, Minnesota – Feb. 5, 2013 – Dotcom-Monitor, (www.Dotcom-Monitor.com), today announces ServerView™ Media Stream Monitoring, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based media stream monitoring technology for Chrome, Flash, and Windows Media stream formats that monitors performance and availability. ServerView™ Media Stream monitors hundreds of online stream formats and codices from an external “user experience” perspective.
Vimeo Website Down – Dotcom-Monitor Verified Vimeo Website Outage
Vimeo Website Down – At approximately 1:30pm CST on 01/16/2013 Dotcom-Monitor began sending alerts to its clients regarding Vimeo webpage elements timing out. Vimeo, is a U.S.-based video-sharing website on which users can upload, share and view videos. Dotcom-Monitor testing verified intermittent connection Vimeo outages occurring from worldwide locations. Dotcom-Monitor captured a video of the Vimeo outage homepage error (note the 5-second domain name server (DNS) load time) using its UserView Monitoring – Video Capture Technology.
Top 10 Web Performance Blog Posts of 2012
As we at Dotcom-Monitor are back at it after the holidays, we thought it would be interesting to see which blog posts over the past year have sparked the most interest. See our Top 10 Web Performance Blog Posts of 2012.
