The GoDaddy DNS outage and Paternity Test: Who’s your GoDaddy?
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.
Caffeinated DNS Monitoring and the AT&T DNS Outage
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.
Website Performance Test – Testing Olympic Game 2012 Websites [Infographic]
Website Performance Test
As one of the world’s most important sporting events the Olympic Games attract millions of people from around the world. The mass media websites that cover the Games must be able to work under unprecedented loads of traffic. The Dotcom-Monitor team decided to take the opportunity to run a website performance test analyzing how the most powerful mass media websites respond to this massive influx of website visitors during the Olympic Games.
We setup website performance monitoring using two Dotcom-Monitor solutions: ServerView and BrowserView Platforms.
Doing DNS Monitoring Right: The AT&T DNS Outage
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.
DNS Diagnostic: Update on the ATT DNS error
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.
Monitoring DNS: ATT DNS nameserver error condition
Aug. 15, 2012- Dotcom-Monitor is monitoring a DNS issue involving ATT DNS nameservers and will provide updates as new details emerge.
Facebook Website Speed Test from Around the World [Infographic]
We test Facebook website speed and page load time from around the world to see how Facebook handles their massive amounts of web traffic.
Website Server Speed Test – Impact of Traffic Loads on Euro Sites [Infographic]
Website Server Speed Test – As worldwide soccer fans went crazy about Euro 2012, the Dotcom-Monitor team took advantage of an opportunity to study how popular media site servers covering Euro 2012 behave when thousands of visitors converge on these websites. Dotcom-Monitor ran website server speed tests and monitored the most popular media site servers covering Euro 2012 from June 8 – June 15, which enabled us to validate how the performance of these media website servers changed and how well the tech teams had prepared for a surge in website traffic due to the Euro 2012 event.
Launching Faster Web Performance Monitoring at #VelocityConf 2012
Dotcom-Monitor Makes Web Performance Testing Faster at Velocity Conference 2012
Santa Clara, CA- Velocity Conference (Booth 512), June 27, 2012 – Dotcom-Monitor launches the world’s fastest scripting tool for automating web performance monitoring of website applications with dynamic page content, UserView Monitoring.
“DevOps needs two things to respond to demands on their time for monitoring of complex web applications. Automation of web performance monitoring scripts that takes minutes – not days – and browser scripts that can step through dynamic page content without breaking,” said CTO Vadim Mazo, “UserView Monitoring gives them both.”
Dotcom-Monitor: Addressing the Website Speed issue with…Speed.
While at Velocity Conference 2012, Dotcom-Monitor is providing expert feedback on website performance and conducting live worldwide website performance tests. Dotcom-Monitor will also be demonstrating its exclusive Picture Match monitoring technology, which quickly automates the most complex monitoring scripts using its proprietary EveryStep Recorder tool.
The ability to quickly set-up effective monitoring is important for the same reason a fast website is important to website users – basically, goal-oriented people value their time. With that in mind, the EveryStep Recorder tool provides the fastest automation of complex website scripting of website monitoring available.
Website Speed Test: BBC has the Fastest Website for Watching Euro 2012 [Infographic]
We ran a website speed test on the websites covering the Euro 2012 games. See how the top media sites ranked in this website speed Infographic.
Bluehost Fastest Web Hosting Website in Test of Best Web Hosting Sites
Who has the Fastest Web Hosting Website?
Put to the test by Dotcom-Monitor, Bluehost ranks as the fastest web hosting website, beating the other top 10 web hosting company websites for speed across three continents, followed closely by InMotion and GoDaddy. Dreamhost was the slowest of the pack globally. Across a set of four different metrics, the Bluehost website proved superior, with GoDaddy scoring close behind in each metric.
