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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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:

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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.

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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.

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Recording Web Application Errors | Experience vs Perceived Experience

UserView Monitoring video is more than a perceived user experience metric, it is the most direct record of user experience performance in the web application monitoring market today. As a result, time and dollars can be invested targeting optimization efforts that you can see will improve your bottom line.

When web application errors occur, saving time, effectively communicating with your team, and seeing the web application error from the user’s view reduces the impact of the error and provides a more direct view of optimizing web applications for the future.

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